"The first full-length biography of Nora, the chambermaid who ran off with the artist, is full of new information on Nora's early life and loves, on the Joyces' decision to marry in 1931 and Nora's years in Zurich after Joyce's death in 1941, and on Helen Kastor, the wealthy New York divorcee whose marriage to their son, Giorgio Joyce, changed their lives. There are fascinating chapters on how the Joyces' notorious erotic letters of 1909 reached the public eye and on the later life of Lucia, the Joyces' schizophrenic daughter, who died in St. Andrew's Hospital in 1982. This then is the home life of the Joyces told from the point of view of the irreverent, immeasurably strong woman from Galway who held it together"--Book jacket.