The Strange World of Willie Seabrook

Literary Nonfiction. This is an intimate, stunning look at the torturous relationship of two writers: Marjorie Worthington and William Seabrook. A renowned writer on the exotic and the occult, Seabrook was an extraordinary figure from the 1920s to the 1940s who traveled widely and introduced the concept of the zombie to Americans. In 1966, years after his death from suicide, Worthington, his second wife, cast her eye on their years together and the erosion of their relationship. Seabrook was a sadist, yet to Worthington he was also enthralling; he was an alcoholic, but she believed she could protect him. In brilliantly depicted moments of folie a deux, we watch Worthington join Seabrook in his decline, and witness the shared claustrophobic, psychological breakdown that ensues.