Necessary Sins: A Memoir

By Lynn Darling

When Lynn Darling met Lee Lescaze at the Washington Post, they could not have been more different. He was older, married, more “establishment,” a celebrated foreign correspondent and editor. She, who entered Harvard at age sixteen, was a brilliant wild child of the sixties. She lived life in the present tense, where every affair was an adventure. Then Darling fell in love and everything changed.

This is a story of the many lessons love can teach us, of a marriage turned upside down and inside out, and all the tenderness, thrills, comfort, and yes, even disappointment, that comes with the territory. Lynn Darling thought she knew the narrative of her own life, until it really began with her “one true north,” and now, ten years after his death, her story is still unfolding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9780440336839

Lynn Darling

Lynn Darling is the author of Necessary Sins. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

Reviews for Necessary Sins

[bobbieharv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good story about her passionate affair with a fellow Washington Post writer, the breakup of his marriage, and his death from cancer. Her writing seemed a little off, maybe because she's a journalist.

[karlus_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

One might wonder how necessary the sins were originally, but nevertheless the young lady caught the eye of the married somewhat older man, and their affair of long ago finally turned into a loving marriage where he lost his young son, and she her husband eventually, and now she can write this very graceful memoir as her grandchildren begin to make themselves known.