Product Description

In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victimsincluding friends and familyout of billions of dollars in the worlds largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons? The people closest to him, the public reasoned, must have known the truth behind his astounding success. Had they been tricked, too? With unprecedented access to the surviving family memberswife Ruth, son Andrew and his fiance Catherine Hooperjournalist Laurie Sandell reveals the personal details behind the headlines. How did Andrew and Mark, the sons whod spent their lives believing in and building their own families around their fathers business first learn of the massive deception? How does a wife, who adored her husband since they were teenagers, begin to understand the ramifications of his actions? The Madoffs were a tight-kniteven claustrophobicclan, sticking together through marriages, divorces, and illnesses. But the pressures of enduring the massive scandal push them to their breaking points, most of all son Mark, whose suicide is one of the many tragedies that grew in the wake of the scandal. Muzzled by lawyers, vilified by the media and roundly condemned by the public, the Madoffs have chosen to keep their silenceuntil now. Ultimately, theirs is one of the most riveting stories of our time: a modern-day Greek tragedy about money, power, lies, family, truth and consequences.