Maria Franziska von Trapp was the one who locked the front door when the family left for America in 1938. Seventy years later she returned to open the Villa once again together with Marianne Dorfer and Christopher Unterkofler. For Maria the true story of the family at the Villa Trapp was a big concern, it should be told and made known to posterity. This book is meant to fulfill her desire, it tells the story of the Villa based on the memories of Maria von Trapp.

During the Roaring Twenties she was the queen of New York. Her sharp tongue and biting humor were legendary. She quarreled with Ernest Hemingway, slept with F. Scott Fitzgerald and got drunk with Truman Capote. Dorothy Parker wrote for “Vogue”, “Vanity Fair” and “The New Yorker” and was a member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, where the city’s cultural crème-de-la-crème came together. Her sarcastic verses and poignant short stories are revealed as tales of broken dreams and waiting for the phone to ring. She became a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, but her career was cut short when she was put on Senator McCarthy’s blacklist because of her political involvement against fascism and racism. Michaela Karl is the first to present a German biography of Dorothy Parker. She portrays her unconventional life and, behind the cynical façade, discovers a sensitive woman on the quest to finding happiness.