This penetrating memoir reveals two months in the last year of Judy Garland's life, as told by the songwriter who was her intimate at the time. Much more than just a kiss-and-tell, this compassionate diary paints a candid portrait of a legendary entertainer whose glamour and talent flickered in the shadow of Ritalin, vodka and a self-destructive impulse...and of the man who loved her and tried to help.

"Will you marry me? I never asked anyone before...but will you marry me?" The voice belongs to songwriter John Meyer. The woman was the fabled Judy Garland. They met in October 1968. He entertained in a piano bar on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She was a tarnished icon whose personal and professional troubles were as notorious as her prodigious talent. Now John Meyer shares intimate memories of how he unexpectedly fell in love with a star whose light had dimmed, how he found the courage to go to bat for her and even try to put her "back up there" against all odds.

Heartbreaker is the true story of one man's obsessive involvement with a celebrity who was penniless, self-destructive...and beloved. To many she was the wistful girl dancing down the yellow brick road, the wondrous young woman singing on the St Louis trolley or, smeared in tears, on the apron of a darkened stage. Meyer tells how he and Garland fell for each other, how he valiantly tried to save her from pills, alcohol, and her own erratic behaviour. And how he grappled with something he was totally unprepared for: romance with his idol - a near mythic, tragic figure who had become flesh and blood.