Bitter Crop : The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

Author: Alexander, Paul

Biography: arts & entertainment

Published on 4 July 2024 by Canongate Books in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 368 pages, B&W photos throughout
242 x 160 x 34 | 578g

Bitter Crop is an unconventional portrait of arguably America's most eminent jazz singer. Acclaimed biographer Paul Alexander shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life - with relevant flashbacks to provide context - to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday's artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.

During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.