By Margie Smith Holt

You may know him as the biographer of Muhammad Ali or the author of the novel that became the Academy Award-winning thriller “Missing,” starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, but Upper West Side author Thomas Hauser’s latest book hits closer to home.

In the newly published “My Mother and Me,” Hauser recounts the life of his mother, Eleanor Nordlinger Hauser—Ellie to all who knew her—who was born and raised on the Upper West Side.

“I wanted this book to be my final gift to my mother. She lived a long, privileged life, she was 96 years old when she died. She was a wonderful woman,” Hauser says. “The reality of life is that 99.999% of all the people who ever live are completely forgotten 50 years after they die. They might be names on a family tree or pictures in a photo album, but people don’t really know who they were … I wanted her to have this marker.”

Though the subject is personal, Hauser believes the book has a wider appeal. In telling his mother’s story, Hauser addresses universal themes such as a child’s relationship with a parent, how those relationships change as everyone grows older, and how societal changes influenced a nearly century-long life.

“She gave people a roadmap for growing old,” Hauser says. “I honestly think that this is a story that will resonate beyond people who knew my mother, who know me … There’s a lot in it that all people can identify with.”

And, of course, there are plenty of UWS locations. Ellie lived in the Belnord on West 86th Street, then in the Majestic at West 72nd and Central Park West.

“It was one of the few apartments on Central Park West … that wasn’t ‘restricted,’” Hauser says. “In other words, the Majestic allowed Jews to become tenants.”

“My Mother and Me” is also sprinkled with what Hauser calls “water cooler moments.” Like the time his grandfather’s law firm hired a temporary secretary who was so awful, the rest of the secretaries threatened to quit. The temp turned out to be Barbra Streisand.

“There’s a lot of gossipy, fun, anecdotal material like that,” he says.

Hauser didn’t start writing the memoir until after his mother died in 2022, but Ellie knew her son’s intentions.

“She had urged me to be completely honest,” Hauser says. “She said, ‘Don’t make me out to be a saint. Talk about the things I did wrong, too.’”

That includes the affair she had with her high school sweetheart, Buddy, whom she met when they were students at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School’s Riverdale campus. Different colleges, the draft, and marriage—to other people—split them apart, but they reunited when Ellie was in her 60s, striking up a correspondence. Both of the now-older young lovers saved all their letters.

“My mother gave me the letters,” Hauser says. “She said, ‘Use them in the book, feel free to use them any way you want. They’re yours. I trust your judgment.’

“I didn’t read them until after my mother died. And boy, was that an experience! It was a little like ‘The Bridges of Madison County,’” says Hauser, referring to the tearjerker romance about a wife and mother’s affair with a photographer in 1960s Iowa.

Hauser grew up in Larchmont, in Westchester County, but returned to his mother’s Upper West Side as an undergrad at Columbia. (“I had my first V&T pizza when I was a freshman at Columbia in September 1963. And I’ve been eating V&T pizza ever since!”) He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1970, moved into an apartment at West 73rd Street and Riverside Drive, and never left.

Hauser spent five years as a litigator on Wall Street, “got bored,” and then began his second career, as a writer, working out of the libraries of Fordham Law School or the New-York Historical Society.

“These were the days when we still wrote longhand, on lined yellow pads, because personal computers hadn’t come in yet,” he says.

These days Hauser works on a computer at home—“a huge apartment with room for my 4,800 books.”

Some 40 of those books are his. His varied titles include novels and non-fiction, including over two dozen books on boxing. His sports passion earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. And yes, Muhammad Ali has been his guest on Riverside Drive.

“He spent a lot of time here,” Hauser says. “I gotta tell you, it’s a lot of fun to sit on the sofa in your living room, watching a VHS tape—which is what we had then—of Muhammad Ali against George Foreman, [while] sitting on the sofa next to Ali!”

Hauser’s novels include three murder mysteries—”The Beethoven Conspiracy,” “Dear Hannah,” and “Agatha’s Friends”—set on the Upper West Side (the detective on each of these murder cases works the 26th precinct, covering part of the UWS, Manhattanville, and Morningside Heights). The main protagonist in Hauser’s thriller, “The Hawthorne Group,” is also an Upper West Sider.

“I love the Upper West Side,” Hauser says. “I keep coming back to it in my writing. One way or another.”

“My Mother and Me” is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook on multiple platforms, including Amazon – HERE.

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