It’s impossible to read Jean Nathan’s biography of Wright Wright, the author of the beloved Lonely Doll children’s book series launched in the late 1950’s, and not be haunted by the life Nathan pieces together of the deeply troubled, mysterious and glamorous artist at its center.

I vividly remember the central images of Wright’s first book— simply titled The Lonely Doll -- from my childhood. Each page of the storybook was made up of photographs of a small blonde doll in pink gingham, Edith, who was captured in poses and situations with suddenly finds herself less lonely when she meets a teddy bear named Little Bear and his teddy bear father, Mr. Bear. In the story, Edith (interestingly, her protagonist shares the same first name with Wright’s dominating mother) meets Little Bear and the two of them stumble upon a wardrobe and a make-up table and proceed to indulge in dressing up and making themselves up, only to be caught and punished by Mr. Bear, including a spanking for Edith. Looking at the detailed and carefully staged photographs, reading the basic but intriguing narrative, it was easy to forget that these are inanimate objects and not toys that have come alive and were captured on film. Wright’s original Lonely Doll book—first published in 1957-- was so successful that she wrote several sequels over the next two decades about Edith’s and Little Bear’s (mis)adventures in which she took them “on location” to tell their stories.

Seemingly simplistic on the surface, these storybooks, as Nathan points out, are “moody, claustrophobic, a little sinister” and the toys are “uncannily lifelike.” Looking at the books and Wright’s traumatic childhood as told by Nathan, the Lonely Doll series plays out the repressed, childlike impulses and the hidden wishes and fantasies that colored Wright’s real life. Nathan’s biography of Wright, pulled together from careful research around a female subject who left precious little documentation of her inner life and personal history, poignantly demonstrates that the lonely doll at the center of her life was Wright herself. Crippled emotionally by a suffocating, demanding mother, forced to sever her relationship with her brother and father at age three, unable to sustain an intimate relationship with a life partner, Wright built her life around her artistic impulses that became convenient and easy escapes into a world of fantasy. Her fears and fantasies are woven through the Lonely Doll series: finding meaningful friendship, indulging in forbidden impulses, “getting caught” and then finding forgiveness.

As Nathan plays literary detective and begins to piece together Wright’s rise as a fashion photographer and celebrated children’s author and her fall into alcoholism and obscurity, she is also uncovering the parallel biography of Edith Stevenson Wright. Edith—known as Edie—was Wright’s mother, a celebrated portrait painter whose renowned talent for capturing her subjects on canvas was matched only by her narcissism, vanity and delusional thinking.

Damaged by her own difficult childhood in which she was forced to begin painting to support her widowed mother and younger siblings, Edie raises Wright to be an obedient, quiet “doll” and then pushes her into acting and modeling when Wright reaches adulthood. As a single parent who supports herself with her painting commissions, Edie centers her life—and her daughter’s life-- around her work. This means that although Wright lacks vital emotional support from her mother, she is taught to cultivate the artistic sensibility and skills that serve her well later as an adult who lacks many basic coping mechanisms and abilities.

Nathan’s careful research through letters, interviews, newspaper articles, scrapbooks and photos goes to root of the Wright family’s dysfunctions. Shortly after Wright was born, Edie separates from her alcoholic, jobless husband and insists that he take their older son, Blaine, with him when he leaves. Edie decides to pretend that her husband and brother no longer exist and forges ahead in life with her daughter. Wright grows up with a profound sense of grief and loss that is never repaired, even when she is joyfully reunited with her brother after they become adults and her father has died. The ongoing relationship between bitter, troubled son and self-involved mother and damaged daughter is not a peaceful one and Wright divides her loyalties—and her time-- between her brother and her mother. However, Edie insists on keeping Wright close to her throughout her life; mother and daughter vacation together, engage in elaborate “dress up” sessions and take hundred of photos of each other, and even sleep in the same bed when they are together. After brief careers as an actress and a fashion model, Wright steps out from behind the camera to become a fashion photographer and later an author. She is able to do so only because Edie is not threatened by these choices as they do not compete with her own fame as a painter and her emotional neediness as a mother.

Wright’s childlike demeanor, her tall, cool, classic “blonde elegance,” remarkable instincts as a photographer, and her celebrity as an author—enhanced by her mother’s social and artistic connections—afforded her access to independence and friendships and even a brief engagement to be married. But, as Nathan illustrates, Wright was unable to really grow up and forge a life that was truly separate from her overbearing mother’s needs and wants. After her mother and brother pass away, Wright, now in middle age, never recovers her emotional and artistic equilibrium and begins to “drink herself to death.”

Nathan’s first meeting with the emaciated spinster Dare Wright — prompted by Nathan’s search for an out of print copy of Lonely Doll remembered from her own childhood – takes place when Wright is 84 and hooked to a ventilator in a hospital for indigent patient. Nathan explains how, after her initial meeting with Wright, she unexpectedly gains access to Wright’s scrapbooks, photos, paintings and friends through Wright’s legal guardian Brook Ashley. She is drawn in by the hundreds of mysterious images and photos that lead her to piece together the sad, fascinating life of a artist and photographer who wanted both “to be seen and not seen,” a damaged “doll” seeking to repair herself. Nathan’s biography is a remarkable achievement in detective work and storytelling, given that her main subject left no diary and granted only one official interview to her publisher.

Since Nathan began her biography of Dare Wright, Random House decided to reissue several of the Lonely Doll titles and a feature film based on Wright’s life is in the works. “The Secret Life’” in the title of this biography is one that is filled with sadness, loss, and the creative impulses of a woman who wanted to reassure herself that the little blonde doll can go astray, but in the end she can find love and acceptance and create her own happy ending.