“Gabrielle’s narrative is a breezy, colorful saga of Old Hollywood . . . . and a touching romance between two flawed, magnetic personalities. Film buffs will want to check this one out.”

–Publisher’s Weekly

“An entertaining, first-rate biography that necessarily serves . . . . as a corrective to Hollywood myth.”

–Air Mail Weekly

“Lara Gabrielle finally buries the canard that Marion Davies was anything like Orson Welles’s Susan Alexander from Citizen Kane. With hard-earned access to Davies’s family and friends, Gabrielle has created a deeply sourced, delightfully told story of a rich, complicated life. With Captain of Her Soul, we finally meet Marion Davies as her own woman—talented, funny, generous, and a wonderful friend.”

– Cari Beauchamp, author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

“Gabrielle has unearthed a treasure trove of previously unpublished material that provides valuable new insights into Marion Davies’s storied life and career.”

-Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian

“Now, finally, there is a deeply researched and fair-minded biography of Davies’s life and movie work . . . . Gabrielle, like a detective or an archaeologist, has reconstructed a life history and made a convincing case . . . . that Marion was a complex, happy, and talented actress . . . . her love affair with W.R. Hearst was genuine, long-lasting, and intensely satisfying.”

-Will Hearst in Alta Journal