Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley

The myth-shattering account of the most famous and most taboo love story in rock-and-roll history

Child Bride reveals the hidden story of rock icon Elvis Presley’s love affair with fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, the ninth-grader he wooed as a G.I. in Germany and cloistered at Graceland before marrying her to fulfill a promise to her starstruck parents. Award-winning biographer Suzanne Finstad perceptively pieces together the clues from candid interviews with all the Presley intimates—including Priscilla herself, along with hundreds of sources who have never before spoken publicly—to uncover the surprising truths behind the legend of Elvis and Priscilla, a tumultuous tale of sexual attraction and obsession, heartbreak and loss.

Child Bride, the only major biography of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, unveils the controversial child-woman who evolved from a lonely and sexually precocious teenager kept by the King of Rock and Roll into a shrewd businesswoman in control of the multimillion-dollar Elvis Presley empire, a rags-to-riches saga of secrets and betrayals that began when Priscilla was only three years old.With three steamy books by the women in Elvis’s life already published (1997’s Elvis: In the Twilight of Memory by June Juanico; Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s 1991 tell-all, Elvis and Me; and Joyce Bova’s Don’t Ask Forever: My Love Affair with Elvis), can the world absorb another? Suzanne Finstad, author of Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, certainly hopes so.

With as many darkly intriguing details as the chambers of Graceland, Finstad–journalist, lawyer, and author of two true-crime books–defends her own theories on the complexity and grit of the former Mrs. Presley. Why did she conspire with her mother to keep her paternity a secret? How old was she when she took up with the King? Suzanne Finstad treats us to her own exhaustively researched version of the facts.