LADY BLUES EYES

The widow of Frank Sinatra delivers the goods in this intimate memoir of their years together, filled with parties, recordings, career hurdles, concerts, travels, and triumphs. Barbara Blakeley was "just a farm girl from Missouri," who became a model, a Vegas showgirl, and the wife of Zeppo Marx, and mingled with celebrities in L.A., Vegas, and Palm Springs. At a Sinatra dinner party for the first time, she felt "there was definitely a frisson between us." With her own marriage crumbling, she made plans to meet Sinatra in Monaco: "Was I about to be seduced by one of the world's greatest romantics?" That idyllic summer "turned into night after glorious night of romance in some of the most glamorous venues in Europe." After "five years of flirting and courting," Barbara and Frank Sinatra married in 1976, and it was the longest of his four marriages. They stayed together for 22 years, until his death in 1998. Probing Sinatra's personality, she contrasts his polite manners and loyalty to friends with his feuds and booze-induced rants. Yet in the end, as she sees it, "Frank was, without doubt, the most romantic man I had ever met," and that feeling permeates the pages throughout.