The following version of the memoir was used to create this study guide: Anonymous, Becoming Duchess Goldblatt. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July 7, 2020. Kindle.

In her memoir, the anonymous author of Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, shares the story of how a fictional social media personality helped her learn to appreciate the life she was given and become a better person despite her own loss. As a child, the author always imagined that she would grow up to be happily married. She wanted to be the mother of one child. Just as she thought she had realized her dream, that dream fell apart when her husband asked for a divorce. The author found herself alone, abandoned by friends and family. She created Duchess Goldblatt as a way to interact with people online, but remain anonymous, a creation that would alter her view of life.

The author admits it was only after her husband told her he wanted a divorce that she realized no one was going to come and rescue her. Her husband demanded a clean break so most of their mutual friends as well as his family sided with him. The author was disturbed when even friends she had since college began to avoid her. When she learned that joint custody of her 4 year-old son meant that she would be separated from him at times, she felt that she had hit the lowest spot in her life. She had lost her beloved father through death, her husband through divorce, and now her son through having to share joint custody.

Trying to find some way to distract herself from her depression, the author decided to set up a social media site where she used the fictional name, Duchess Goldblatt. She wanted to be able to see what other people were doing, yet remain anonymous. As Duchess began posting snippets of wisdom and responding to other people’s posts she began to create a following. Among her followers was singer and entertainer Lyle Lovett, a musician whom the author had adored for years. After the two forged a friendship, Lyle invited the Duchess to meet him backstage at one of his concerts. The author attended, expecting Lyle to lose interest once he met the woman behind the Duchess. Instead, the two developed a personal friendship in which Lyle encouraged her to continue her work as the Duchess and to write her book Becoming Duchess Goldblatt.

In addition to sharing with her reader how she created Duchess Goldblatt, the author also shares the circumstances of her early years. Her mother took a drug overdose when she was pregnant. The author believed her mother intended for the drugs to cause a spontaneous abortion. The author’s brother, who was ten years older, was severely mentally ill and already suicidal when the author was old enough to know him. Her family’s daily life revolved around trying to keep him happy even though he was an angry, hurtful alcoholic. The author adored her father, but her father tried to pressure her into giving up her life to take care of her brother. The author refused, knowing that option would kill her, but she always sensed that she had disappointed her father. She was distraught when her father died just before she graduated from college.

When the author finished her book and was letting some chosen people read it in advance, a family member assured the author that she had become Duchess Goldblatt. Duchess was known for comforting people and knowing just the right thing to say, a talent that the author did not think she possessed. When she first created Duchess, she insisted that they were two different beings. As time passed, the author believed she was channeling the best parts of herself, the things her father would have liked about her, into Duchess Goldblatt. When a relative reads the author’s book, however, she tells the author she should stop giving her father credit for the loving attitude demonstrated by the Duchess. She said that the author and Duchess had become one person.