Oprah Winfrey selects Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir as her next book club selection

By Hillel Italie, The Associated Press on October 8, 2024.

NEW YORK (AP) – Oprah Winfrey has chosen Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir as her new book club pick, and made a trip to the famed Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, to meet with Presley’s daughter and Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s granddaughter, actor Riley Keough.

Lisa Marie Presley’s “From Here to the Great Unknown,” completed by Keough after Presley died unexpectedly in 2023, was published Tuesday. Winfrey’s interview with Keough, which will include rare family photos, home videos and audio recordings made by Lisa Marie Presley, will air Tuesday night at 8 p.m. EDT on CBS.

“I have great love and admiration for Lisa Marie Presley, and was so moved that her daughter Riley, through her grief, was able to help her finish a beautifully touching memoir that allows us to see her mother at her most honest and vulnerable,” Winfrey said in a statement. “This is an intimate look at what it was like growing up as heir to one of America’s most famous families.”

Keough said in a statement that upon being told by Winfrey that she had selected “From Here to the Great Unknown,'” she thought of how her mother would have been proud “to know her story was going to be read and discussed with such empathy, thought and grace.”

“She would have felt incredibly vulnerable, but profoundly grateful for the chance to really reach people,” added Keough, who along with Julia Roberts narrated the audiobook edition.

Lisa Marie Presley was the only daughter of Elvis Presley, who was just 42 when he died suddenly in 1977 at Graceland, while young Lisa Marie was in the house. In preparing her memoir, she had recorded “story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor,” according to the publisher, Random House.

The singer and actor also talked about her marriage to Michael Jackson, struggles with addiction and the “ever-present grief” of losing her father. In a video clip released before Tuesday’s interview aired, Keough told Winfrey that at times she would find her mother on the floor, drunk, listening to her father’s music and crying.

Lisa Marie Presley was 54 when she died of complications from bariatric surgery years earlier. Keough is the oldest of her four children, two of whom she had with actor-musician Danny Keough and two with guitarist-producer Michael Lockwood.

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