← Back to discovery

Suits Me

Diane Wood Middlebrook

1998320 pagesabout 5–7 hours
1998
first published
  • 1998Houghton Mifflin · 326 pages · ENGISBN 9780395654897
  • 1999VIRAGO PRESS LTD · 352 pagesISBN 9781860497636
  • 1998VIRAGO (LITT) · 352 pagesISBN 9781853816581
  • 1998Houghton Mifflin CoISBN 9780965057950
  • 1999Mariner Books · 320 pages · ENGISBN 9780395957899
  • 2000Books on TapeISBN 9780736648509

"Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton's death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception - he had been "married" to five women and had reared several adopted children - and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth." "But locked away in Billy's office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy's secrets." "With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver, who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex."--BOOK JACKET.

How do you feel?