[4] In Haywire, Brooke details her experience of growing up immersed in the glamorous and extravagant lifestyle afforded by her parents’ successful Hollywood and Broadway careers and tells the story of how her privileged, beautiful family and their seemingly idyllic life fell apart.

[2] Leland Hayward – Brooke’s father, who was a charismatic person and prominent theatrical agent and stage, film, and television producer[5] "who taught Fred Astaire how to dress and whom Katharine Hepburn called 'the most wonderful man in the world'–even after he ended their romance,"[2] who "thrived on the glamorous Hollywood scene.

"[6] His clients included Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Ernest Hemingway, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Billy Wilder, Gene Kelly, Myrna Loy, Herman Mankiewicz, Gene Fowler, Gregory Peck, William Wyler, Fredric March, Boris Karloff, Lillian Hellman, Helen Hayes, Dashiell Hammett, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn.

[7] His marriage to Margaret Sullavan (another client) ended in 1948, and he later married Nancy "Slim" Hawks (later Lady Keith), and Pamela Digby Churchill (later Harriman).

Margaret Sullavan – Brooke's mother, who was both a Hollywood and a Broadway star, by all accounts a superb actress, and known for her husky voice and "irresistible crooked grin.

"[2] She performed with the University Players at Harvard, made her Broadway debut in 1926,[8] and starred in 16 films including the classics Only Yesterday (1933), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Back Street (1941).

"[2] Critics commented that the book, although published when Brooke was 39, deals mostly with her life up to her early 20s and is mostly silent on her personal tragedies (the most evident of which were her failed marriages) that occurred in the intervening years.