The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince

by Mayte Garcia

Overview

At the one-year anniversary of his death, legendary musician Prince's first wife shares a uniquely intimate, candid, and revelatory look inside the personal and professional life of one of the world's most beloved icons.

In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell this story or can provide a deeper, more nuanced portrait of Prince — both the famously private man and the pioneering, beloved artist — than Mayte, his partner during some of the most pivotal personal and professional years of his career. The Most Beautiful is a book that will be returned to for decades, as Prince's music lives on with generations to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316468992
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	146,265
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.12(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mayte Garcia is an internationally acclaimed dancer, actress, singer, and choreographer. She has appeared in numerous films and starred in the VH1 reality series Hollywood Exes, as well as Army Wives, Psych, The Closer, and Nip/Tuck. She lives in Los Angeles with her young daughter.

Editorial Reviews

"An achingly loving memoir...a heartbreaking inside look at the tortured side of genius that most of us are never allowed to see, and it belongs on the shelf next to the definitive Prince bios."—Entertainment Weekly


"Garcia's memoir raises complex issues about the nature and the value of privacy,
whether between celebrities and their fans, or two people in their intimate lives together....given all of her book's revelations, Garcia never comes across as vindictive...."—Maclean's


"A gentle and moving account of Ms. Garcia's relationship with the legendary musician. [She] writes with clear eyes, grace and dignity."—Huffington Post

From the Publisher

2017-04-17
Prince's ex-wife recalls the joys and heartbreaks of life with the late superstar. When Garcia met Prince, she was a 16-year-old military brat living with her family in Germany and making a healthy living as popular belly dancer. With the encouragement of her hard-charging mother, she got a videotape of her moves into Prince's hands, launching a friendship that, once she was of age, blossomed into a romance. Garcia recalls her early enchantment with the funk-pop-rock virtuoso, from his hotel rooms dolled up by a "foo foo master" assigned to make them homier to his conversational charm to his scent ("like the most expensive shelf in the Sephora perfume aisle") to notes revealing his vulnerable side ("U're so pretty. It cheers me up if someone tries 2 ruin my day. Many do"). Prince became her employer (she danced on his tours in the 1990s), first lover, and, in 1996, husband. Garcia's memoir is mostly a warmhearted remembrance of life with Prince, but she also recalls chafing at life in the gilded cage of Paisley Park and, late in their brief marriage (they divorced in 2000), his alienating obsession with Jehovah's Witness doctrine. The deepest wound, however, was the 1996 death of their week-old infant son, who was born severely deformed; a later miscarriage all but ended their relationship: "If fighting was an ‘exercise,' the last year of our marriage was a spin class from hell." Prince could be callous, she recalls: he put her to work less than a month after their son died, was unfaithful, and left her saddled with an expensive property after the divorce. But little bitterness fills these pages. Garcia closes with assertions that she's moved on (Hollywood Exes, an adopted daughter, an animal rescue) and expressions of regret that Prince's life was cut short. A genial, candid portrait of Prince's ill-fated turn as a family man.

Kirkus Reviews

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