The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse

1 of Pitchfork's 10 Best Music Books of 2023

The true story of Connie Converse - a mid-century New York singer and songwriter, who mysteriously disappeared - and one writer's quest to understand her life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard a Connie Converse recording, he was convinced she could not be real.

Fishman was determined to know more about this artist and how she slipped through the cracks of music history but there was one problem: in 1974, at the age of fifty, Converse simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. It is by turns a hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling story of dark family secrets, taciturn New England traditions, a portrait of 1950s Greenwich Village, of a visionary intellect and talent, and a woman who fiercely strove for independence when the odds were against her.

ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"It takes a great journalist to find the stories behind the mysteries we carry. Howard Fishman has done that with his superb examination of Connie Converse." - Ken Burns

• Paperback / softback

• 608 pages, 16 pages of black and white photos