Betsy Carter seemed to have it all: a gorgeous husband with Paul Newman eyes, a thriving career as a journalist at Newsweek and Esquire, and invites to the hottest parties in the best city in the world. Carter was the ultimate "New York woman," and so it was no wonder that she founded a magazine by that name.

But in her early thirties, her luck turned toxic: a fire, illness, divorce, a devastating cab accident, unspeakably bad boyfriends. Carter's life became so grim that her therapist suggested she have an exorcism; a tarot card reader burst into tears as she laid Carter's life out on the table.

This moving story, set against the gossipy and often hilarious world of magazine publishing in the go-go eighties, reveals what it was like for one woman to be stripped bare, wander the wreckage, and come back with her head and renovations intact.