Priscilla Beaulieu Presley will tell the story of life after her divorce from singer Elvis Presley in a new memoir.
Grand Central will publish the actor’s Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, co-written with Mary Jane Ross, in the fall, the press announced in a news release. The title of the book shares its name with an Italian song that Elvis Presley memorably performed live in Las Vegas.
Priscilla Beaulieu Presley first met Elvis in West Germany when she was 14 and he was 24. They married less than eight years later, and had a daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, in 1968. In 1973, the couple divorced, and Priscilla went on to become an actor, starring in the prime-time soap opera Dallas and in films including The Naked Gun and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
Lisa Marie Presley died in 2023. The following year, Random House published her posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, co-written with her daughter Riley Keough.
In Softly, as I Leave You, Grand Central says, Priscilla Beaulieu Presley “shares her journey with a quiet dignity that will comfort and reassure anyone who has suffered—and survived—seemingly unbearable loss.”
“This book covers eight decades of my life,” she said in a statement. “Writing it has been a learning experience on many levels. I have reflected deeply both on myself and on those I love. I have always loved and admired Elvis, but the more than four decades of living without him have taught me how rare and extraordinary he was as a human being.”
Softly, as I Leave You is slated for publication on Sept. 23.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
