The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction

by Julie Klam

A Washington Post best nonfiction book pick of 2021

"It is biography as an expression of love." - The New York Times

New York Times-bestselling author Julie Klam's funny and moving story of the Morris sisters, distant relations with mysterious pasts.

Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the twentieth century the sisters' parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage and promised to send for them when he settled in California--a promise he never kept. One of the Morris sisters later became a successful Wall Street trader and advised Franklin Roosevelt. The sisters lived together in New York City, none of them married or had children, and one even had an affair with J. P. Morgan.

The stories of these independent women intrigued Klam, but as she delved into them to learn more, she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue.

The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters is the revealing account of what Klam discovered about her family--and herself--as she dug into the past. The deeper she went into the lives of the Morris sisters, the slipperier their stories became. And the more questions she had about what actually happened to them, the more her opinion of them evolved.

Part memoir and part confessional, and told with the wit and honesty that are hallmarks of Klam's books, The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters is the fascinating and funny true story of one writer's journey into her family's past, the truths she brings to light, and what she learns about herself along the way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, History, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Book Club

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2021

About the author

Julie Klam grew up in Bedford, NY. She has been a freelance writer since 1991, writing for such publications as “O, The Oprah Magazine,” “Rolling Stone,” “Harper’s Bazaar,” “Glamour,” "The Washington Post" and “The New York Times Magazine.
A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she was a writer for VH1’s Pop-Up Video, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Special Class Writing.
A New York Times Bestseller, she has written Please Excuse My Daughter, You Had Me At Woof, Love at First Bark, and Friendkeeping and The Stars In Our Eyes (all Riverhead Books)
She lives in Manhattan with her family and dogs.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

A writer undertakes genealogical research to uncover the truth about the fabled Morris Sisters (her second cousins twice removed) -- who lived unusually independent lives as women who came of age and made a fortune in 1920s New York. The title is misleading, because the author uncovers little new information about the women. Mostly, this book narrates the writer's own experiences and feelings on this journey. She travels to Romania and St. Louis in her research and relays how difficult her tasks are. I'd guess this book is 30% about the Morris sisters and 70% about Julie Klam's obsession with herself. The most annoying tic here is her reliance on sarcastic parenthetical statements (many with exclamation points!). Ugh. Not recommended.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars on this one. I’m glad I read it, and I thought it was an interesting story. I’ve done a little genealogy on my own family, so I definitely connected with her experiences, and she had really thoughtful insights into why people might feel compelled to research family members that they barely knew. I loved the idea of the ways that stories from your family’s past can help define your own story about yourself. I just felt like the tone didn’t really hit for me - it was self-deprecating but also a bit clueless. There is definitely a niche for books by non-experts who are able to be ironic and funny about their own non-expertise, but she didn’t quite have that irony, so her conclusions (I bet life under Communism was bad and it was sad to live in an asylum!) ended up feeling simplistic without being sufficiently self-aware about everything she was still missing. I also couldn’t help feeling like there was some padding going on … in a book that is just a shade over 250 (small) pages, I get suspicious when you reprint every word of every email you exchanged with various librarians, even if the intention was really to give a “you are there!” tone to the story of the research. It did inspire me to pop back onto my Ancestry page again, though, so that’s a success.

[Laura Zigman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge Julie Klam fan -- I've loved every one of her books -- and this is one of my absolute favorites (but I love them all). On one level a genealogy-detective story, on another level a meditation on the stories families tell about themselves (some of them true; some of them not true), THE ALMOST LEGENDARY MORRIS SISTERS is a joy to read. Julie's trademark humor and warmth are evident on every page. I loved this book.

[Peggy Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more but it was a pleasant but a bit boring trip doing family research. I don’t think there was enough information to warrant a book.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so loved this book. Julie Klam's wonderful sense of humor winds throughout this book that is an always engaging hunt to uncover a family mystery. Where better in these days of Ancestry and 23 and me than to look to your own family for wildly interesting stories? And Julie's never disappoints.

[Jill Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The premise is wonderful, but the journey is eye-rollingly mediocre.

[Ellyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say enough about this fascinating book written by Julie Klam. Her research about her family, The Morris Sisters, led her to Romania and her descriptions of the roads and synagogues have made me want to visit there even more than before. Ancestors can become part of your life if you welcome their stories. This book is about her family but could be the saga of many Jewish families that emigrated ( minus the specifics). Julie Klam may be my new favorite author and I’m waiting for another book to arrive today. Great read 📖!
P. S. I’m sharing this with my mother in law , aunts and uncles so I’m keeping it in my family

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A potentially interesting story that dead-ended at every turn. I was disappointed and bored.

[shay allyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because I too am researching my family and was interested in others’ experiences. The book overall was ok, although it became clear pretty quickly there really isn’t a lot of information on the Morris sisters. Another reviewer addresses this issue well, but the tone was very out of step with the subject matter. Glib comments about institutionalization and Communism in Romania didn’t land well for me. And while she addresses her deficiencies as a researcher, it was really frustrating reading about some of her naïveté.

What killed me though was page 227:
She got the wills of the sisters, threw them into a pile, and then wondered how to find the death certificates months later?!?!?!? I could not understand why you wouldn’t read over the wills in detail, especially when someone went out of their way to acquire them for you. So, so silly.

I don’t regret reading this book, though—I did come away with a couple new ideas for my genealogical research, and the chapters on her research trips to St Louis and Romania were the most interesting and vivid in detail. This book could’ve been better, though.

[Julia Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was just so very much to love about Julie Klam's latest book. The concept of family fiction is a familiar one. Those stories that get bigger and more impressive the years pass, we've all got them.

There was something about Julie's approach as to how much of the true history continues to get lost/ morphed/ idealized as the years go by, especially the realities of Jewish life in Europe in the early 1900s hits a rough, but essential note. The ways in which she brings her very open mind to her research make the whole of it so very compelling. The conversations with family as well as strangers. The journey of getting from myth to fact or at least close. And the ways in which these sisters each come out from their umbrella into very individual characters is compelling to say the least. I am sending this in audio format (great to hear from Julie in her own voice) to the many women in my family. I suggest you do the same once you have fist gifted this to yourself. Enjoy!

[Liz Willard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I'd learned and accepted that I don't have to finish every book I start, but I proved myself wrong again with this one. I struggled with the author's writing style right away. I generally like casual, conversation-like writing, but this one was just so unpolished, so rough, it was distracting. (One example - "I believe the technical term for me is "dum-dum." Really? This is a professional author?)

Beyond the writing style, this book is such a disappointment overall. Every chapter repeats the same pattern: she thought this information was true, she looked (uselessly) here, she found that information might be wrong, but in the end she's not really sure about anything but that trying to find information is hard. I stuck with it because I thought she'd actually learn something interesting, but - spoiler alert - she doesn't. She tries to share some insight on how she feels about her distant relatives and what their lives mean to her, but that rings false.

Skip it.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m active on ancestry.com, so I really appreciate that lots of research is mostly months of plodding, and often turns up dead ends. Significant discoveries are a rarity. That being said, Julie Klam’s research of the Morris sisters went exactly the same way. I was just hoping that she had cut out the myriad details of the dead ends and the rambling about her feelings about her family. It felt like too much filler to me.

[Dawna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genealogy providing bare bones

Why would anyone assume that sisters living a quiet life together would provide a book-long, human interest story? And when it didn’t, why would a sketch of the author’s trips to gather research become a book worthy of publication? Where have all the editor’s gone?

[britt_brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This totally makes me want to research my family! These four infamously single, successful sisters were Klam’s grandma’s cousins. She set out on a journey to glean more about the Morris Sisters - why they never married nor had children; how their wealth came to fruition. Plenty of family lore existed, but how much was true? She uncovered some surprising missing details. Absolutely fascinating read. And I loved Klam’s dry wit!

[Jancee Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all of Julie Klam's books, but I really think this is my favorite -- absolutely fascinating, hilarious as always, and there are so many surprises that it reads like a suspense novel. I was eagerly turning the pages to see what happened next.

[Patricia O · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring

I was half way through the book, and she hadn't gotten to much about the sister's lives. It's all about the author. I stopped reading.

[Sarah McCraw Crow]

I really enjoyed Julie Klam's The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters. Here's some of my review, for BookPage:

Growing up in the 70s, Julie Klam heard stories about her grandmother’s first cousins, the Morris sisters. These were Selma, Malvina, Marcella, and Ruth Morris, who immigrated from Eastern Europe with their parents around 1900, and were soon orphaned in St. Louis, but who eventually made their way to New York City, where they made a fortune. “I was told they were completely crazy, obscenely wealthy, never married, had no children, and all lived together in a house in New York City,” Klam writes in The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters, her sixth book. “The common thread in the stories was that every one of my father’s family had a story to tell about them, most of them involving how… little they gave to [fill in relative’s name who is telling the story].”

In her conversational, often funny style, Klam takes us along on her intrepid search for the truth, near truth, and outright lies embedded in her family’s colorful lore about the Morris sisters. Klam visits older family members to record their conflicting stories, and learns a surprising secret about the girls’ mother. And she visits various sites in the sisters’ lives, most affectingly the Jewish orphanage in St. Louis where three of the sisters were sent as children, and two small towns in Romania—there, Klam takes in the towns’ abandoned Jewish cemeteries and near-abandoned synagogues.

Along the way, Klam weaves in anecdotes and the records she uncovers, and we get to know these sisters, who emerge as distinct individuals, and yes, almost legendary women. But The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters is not so much a story about the sisters as it is the tale of Klam’s search, her wrong turns and dead ends, and on the sadder truths that family members papered over. “It turns out that finding the truth in a family can be tricky,” Klam notes, an understatement. The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters is a quick and entertaining read, but it offers a meditation on the meaning of family, and what our ancestors mean to us, even when we can’t get as close as we’d like to the entirety of their stories.

[Susan Tunis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I paused writing that opening sentence. I wanted to write "memoir," but that isn't quite right, and neither is "biography." And, yet, it is both of those things.

In short, Ms. Klam had some relatives--long deceased--a couple of generations older and a bit removed, that had attained legendary status in their family. They were four unmarried sisters who lived together their entire lives. One became fabulously wealthy through her own intelligence and hard work in a time when WOMEN DID NOT DO THAT. Another was in the arts. But there were copius stories about all of them, about their mother who died in childbirth, about the father who abandoned them in an orphanage, about the affair with JP Morgan, the visit to FDR's White House, the charitable donations, and on and on and on. But as Klam digs into researching these fascinating relations, she finds facts elusive and often nakedly contradictory to what she'd always been told.

This is one of those quest books--to find answers--where it's the journey as much as the destination. Klam is a likeable everywoman with whom to spend time. And I have to admit her Jewish cultural identity and and references were part of the attraction for me. What can I say? She's a member of the tribe.

The ultimate answers, what ones Klam was able to establish and others she could only speculate about, weren't disappointing at all. These women were... not of their time. No, they weren't famous, but they were fascinating in their own way, and more than worthy subject matter for a book.

[Chava · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book about Klam's exploration of her genealogy -- specifically four Romanian sisters and their history, seems like a "Plan B" book. She wanted to write about her eccentric cousins, but because there was so little information available, she wrote about her research and its twists and turns. It is interesting and Klam shows a dry sense of humor when faced with the frustration of tracking documents through bureaucracies and not being able to access records.

I was drawn to the book because of the four sisters. It reminded me of four sisters from Transylvania (now Romania), who immigrated to America after World War I:
Vilma - my grandmother, smart and sweet and totally devoted to her husband and daughter (my mother)
Irma - the baby, even when she was 80 years old, worked as a bookkeeper, was married late and never had children
Estee - had some kind of back problem - stayed home and cooked and cleaned for the family
Rose - the eldest, worked as a cook. She had left her husband while still in Romania, she had one daughter and never remarried.
(Another sister, Helen, had moved to Israel after World War II)
When I was growing up, Irma, Estee, and Rose lived together and used to host the family on Sunday.

So although Klam's relatives were somewhat reclusive, comfortable enough to donate large sums to Brandeis and their local library, and much quirkier than my great aunts, the book brought back a lot of fond memories. I really enjoyed how Klam had to wade through family lore to get to the facts and what really happened with the sisters.

[Karna Converse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Family stories about an eccentric set of sisters are put to the test of genealogical-based research


Klam grew up hearing stories about her paternal grandmother's first cousins—a rags-to-riches story about four sisters who emigrated with their parents from Romania, were placed in the Jewish Shelter Home orphanage in St. Louis as children, and found success as adults in New York City. She interviews family members who share stories "as I know it;" visits historical museums; and searches newspaper archives and genealogical databases to determine what of the family story is fact and what is fiction.

Readers who are avid family history buffs are sure to identify with the happy dances of discovering a new piece of information, find common ground with the brick walls Klam comes up against, and long to travel to their ancestral homeland.

[Elizabeth Majka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really was a delightful audiobook. Julie Klam always writes so candidly about her journey through life, and this take on her delve into researching and learning about some pretty confusing family history was no different. I had no idea who the Morris sisters were when this started, and when it ended I didn't want to stop hearing about them and their fascinating history.

[Sally Koslow · Rating 2 out of 5]

A delightful read told in Julie Klam's charming, highly conversational voice. The book is as much about genealogical research, with its many dead ends and rabbit holes, as it is about the author's four zany, chain-smoking cousins. A very quick, captivating read.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at researching family genealogy. The author includes these really strange asides that are meant to be funny/quirky, but were distracting to me.

I enjoyed looking at the process of an in-depth research project from the perspective of a non-librarian/archivist. I appreciated the desire for connection with her family history; I had a similar feeling of connection as I traced my family members back several generations.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less about the women themselves, and more about the authors efforts to research them. Not my favorite.

[JayEllieKay · Rating 1 out of 5]

MY GOD. JUST DON'T.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little book, quick read. I can't say that I felt that I ever got to know the Morris sisters very well. The author interjected a lot about her own life, which wasn't unwelcome and at times pretty funny, but it wasn't what I thought the book was going to be about.

[Adam Forrester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about Julie’s pursuit of truth and reading about how difficult that is to find when one digs through family history and public archives. It made me want to do something like this myself with my own family history. Also, I’m glad to have been able to travel with her, through her writing, to the specific places she visited for her research.

[Betty-Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating journey into a family’s past…..the truths, the fiction, the unknown.

[Deb Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend recommended this book since she knows how much I love family history research. Enjoyable and quick read. I agree, if you do genealogy research this book will resonate with you better than those who don't investigate their ancestors. Liked the fact author didn't find all the answers to "family stories" she set out to discover (which is the case for many researchers). But she did find different and equally fascinating facts. Also, fun to read along with her methods and see how she learns along the way.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Klam's effort to discover the truths about her family- her cousins Selma, Malvina, Marcella, and Ruth Morris- is the larger part of this interesting memoir of sorts. The sisters who were abandoned in a St Louis orphanage after coming from Romania managed to overcome their circumstances (although sone challenges dogged them) and become wealthy women who endowed a variety of charities. This illustrates how families shape their histories to fit- not everything she'd heard over the years was true of course. I appreciated the details, often humorous, of how she did her research but felt these overshadowed the women. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ASC. An entertaining read.