Mary Alice Kemery, popularly known as Linda Goodman (April 9, 1925 – October 21, 1995), was a New York Times bestselling American astrologer and poet. She wrote the first astrology book to make the New York Times Best Seller list.

Early life and background

Linda Goodman was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. Although she never revealed her year of birth, swearing even her father to silence, it emerged posthumously that she was born in 1925. According to data collector Frank C. Clifford, Linda was born in Morgantown on April 9, 1925, at 6:05 a.m. Clifford cites Linda's birth certificate as his source. Her father's name was Robert Stratton Kemery; her mother's maiden name was Mazie McBee. By her own account, Goodman was born in her maternal grandparents' house on 115 Kingwood Street. She attended and graduated from Parkersburg High School in 1943 aged 18 years.

American astrologer and poet who wrote a top selling book, "Sun Signs" (1968), which sold over five million copies, bringing astrology into the everyday market. The paperback rights for her second book, "Love Signs," sold for a record $2.25 million in 1978.

She began her career as a newspaper writer locally, and married her first husband, writer William Snyder. They had five kids, three of whom died in infancy. With a divorce, she took a job as a radio announcer in Pittsburgh where she took the name Linda and married her second husband, radio announcer Sam Goodman.

Her interest in astrology blossomed when she moved to New York City in 1963 and she totally immersed herself in the study to the exclusion of everything else. Determined and intense, with an explosive temper, she was also generous, often giving gifts to friends of cars or jewelry, a habit that led to bankruptcy in the late '80s.

Goodman moved to the remote mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1970 to a 10,000 square foot home, where she could write with less distraction. She had an affair with Robert Brewer, a 26-year-old marine biologist who left her in 1972. In 1973, her 21-year-old daughter Sally committed suicide. She was an aspiring actress who had overdosed on Demerol in New York. Goodman refused to believe that she was dead and said it was a government conspiracy, a cover-up, and spent a half million dollars searching for her daughter. Eventually she claimed that Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes and Elvis Presley were alive and in hiding.

Diagnosed diabetic in the mid-1980s, she distrusted traditional medicine and sometimes refused to take medication or treatment. She had a toe removed and then part of her leg amputated. She became a virtual recluse. Her former husband, Sam Goodman, died in 1983. Goodman continued to write and completed her "Linda Goodman's Love Signs Relationship Report" to go on the Internet. She died from complications from diabetes on 21 October 1995 in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Goodman's notable clients included Steve McQueen, Princess Grace, and Sonny and Cher.

Source: Wikipedia & https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Goodman,_Linda