Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, with NYT Theater Critic Jesse Green

When Mary Rodgers began her memoir about her life as the daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and, later, as the mother of composer Adam Guettel, she set out to be honest, unabashedly so. In her posthumously published book, which was co-authored by Green, the reader comes to know her as a musical genius herself and the sometimes wounded daughter of a famous father and difficult mother.

Her work lives on as the composer of Broadway sensation Once Upon A Mattress. She collaborated with everyone from Judy Holliday to Carol Burnett and Leonard Bernstein, along with romantic interludes with Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince. Jesse Green reveals how he finished the book, why Rodgers’s life resonates with us still, and what her life can teach us.