Anything Your Little Heart Desires

Book excerpt: A memoir by the daughter of famous attorney Bartley C. Crum: “A gripping account not only of Crum but of McCarthyism and its devastating effects” (SFGate). The FBI kept a secret dossier on him. He was a confidante to stars; adviser to politicians; and lawyer to the likes of William Randolph Hearst, Rita Hayworth, and the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, whom he defended during the House Un-American Activities Committee trials of 1947. Bartley C. Crum was also Patricia Bosworth’s father—a frequently absent, unrelentingly principled, and stubbornly self-destructive one. Anything Your Little Heart Desires is Bosworth’s memoir of life with him, and of the momentous events that shaped his lifetime, from the New Deal to the Cold War and the anti-Communist fervor that jolted American life. Using interviews, journals, letters, and her father’s own files, Bosworth delivers a profoundly personal portrait of the father she never fully knew, and the political forces that shaped a nation.