What we learned from Lisa Marie Presley's posthumous memoir

Lisa Marie Presley's life was a very American tragedy. As the rock'n'roll king's only child, she seemed destined to spend her days in the shadow of her origins. Born in 1968, her own life's journey included a rise to rock stardom, marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage, struggles with drug addiction and the suicide of her beloved son Ben in 2020. It all ended with her own death in January 2023. The 54th -year-old suffered a heart attack and had been trying to lose weight after bariatric surgery.

Presley had recorded tapes for a planned autobiography, which was completed posthumously by her daughter, actress Riley Keough. From Here to the Great Unknown is released today; As befits Elvis' daughter, it's quite a ride. Here are some of the highlights.

On Elvis

In August 1977, when Lisa Marie was nine years old, Elvis rented the entire Libertyland amusement park in Memphis so he could take her on the rides. “I remember sitting next to him that day on the roller coaster – the Zippin Pippin – with one eye on the ride and the other on the gun in his holster on my side,” Lisa Marie recalls in hers Memoirs. “If you don't know him or understand him, it sounds terrible, I know. You might think he was crazy wearing a piece with his daughter sitting next to him, but he was just from the South. It was really funny. So we rode and rode.”

A week later, Lisa Marie was in the upstairs bathroom at Graceland watching her father die of a drug-induced heart attack. “They were standing over him, moving him around and trying to work on him. I screamed bloody murder.” She is still haunted by the sounds of her grandfather Vernon wailing in the living room, “He's gone, he's gone!” But as she notes with palpable disgust, “That afternoon became a battle against all. Everyone went into town. Everything was mopped, wiped clean – jewelry, artifacts, personal items – before he was even declared dead.”