Frances Stroh was not an archetypal poor little rich girl.

She grew up as heiress to the Stroh Brewing Co. in Grosse Pointe, Mich. She had a privileged, if not an entirely charmed, childhood. By the mid-1980s, the family-run company had become the largest private beer company in the U.S. and the third-largest beer company in the country. By the time Stroh was in her 30s, however, the family’s fortunes had dwindled along with the Detroit automotive industry — and the city itself. By then the company, established in 1850, had turned down a billion-dollar takeover from an Australian financier in the 1980s. Another deal for half that amount fell through just a few years later, and, in a humiliating reversal of fortune, the company was finally sold in a fire sale to Miller and Pabst in 1999.

In her memoir, “Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss” ($10.99, published by Harper Collins), an unflinching look back at a family that appeared to have everything, Stroh chronicles her early life of privilege in a mansion filled with antiques, which she was often forbidden to touch, her parents’ divorce and father’s second marriage to one of Stroh’s former schoolmates, the company’s ill-fated real-estate investment in Detroit, the drug addiction that ultimately killed her brother Charlie and the grim shareholder meeting in the 1990s when the family was informed that the money was (almost) gone.

“Running a regional brewery was a far cry from running the beer giant we’d become in the eighties and nineties,” Stroh wrote. “And we’d simply blown it.” She spoke to MarketWatch about her life before the money ran out, how she managed to avoid squandering the last of her inheritance — and to build a life for herself in the years since then.

MarketWatch: Your family lived in the fancy suburb of Grosse Pointe. Your childhood friends were progeny of the Fords, Goodyears and Chryslers. Even then, it sounded like a throwback to another era, like it was never going to last.

Frances Stroh: There was a resistance in the family to change our lifestyle. The company was paying dividends out of principle. My father continued to spend at the same rate, which isn’t unusual for someone who gets a check that size every three months. Even though family members had been warned about it, the dawning of that reality really hit home when the letter from the board of directors arrived. The Hemingway quote from ‘The Sun Also Rises’ was perfect: “How did you go bankrupt? Gradually and then suddenly.”

Growing up Stroh: Frances and her siblings. Eric Stroh

MarketWatch: When did it become clear to you?

Stroh: At that last shareholder meeting in the late 1990s. It was the climax of this story.

MarketWatch: The money was gone, there were a few million dollars left, and, weirdly, you were all asked to vote on one last possible investment in a biotech company.

Stroh: It seemed desperation on behalf of the board that they were turning to the family for advice for the first time. It became clear that making the riskiest investment of all was the easiest decision because there was some hope there. It was a hemoglobin product for the treatment of septic shock that made it into Phase III trials in 2000. We were optimistic. It was a glimmer of hope that went on for 10 or 12 years after that last family shareholders meeting.

MarketWatch: Did that glimmer give you time to adjust or was it like a long slow breakup?

Stroh: Every year the family put in $1 million or $1.5 million to keep our stake intact. We continued bolstering the initial investment. I personally never invested much in that product. I know a lot of the family did. My mother was so smart about her investing, but even she was convinced that she should invest money in it. We all take financial risks sometimes, even the most careful of us sometimes. And sometimes they pay off.

“ ‘We made these brands that were so emblematic of the American dream. Their collapse operated as a metaphor of what happened to this country.’ ”

MarketWatch: So how did you manage financially in the intervening years?

Stroh: When I turned 21, my mother had bought small amounts of stock: a little Coca-Cola KO, -0.19% , a little Pfizer PFE, -0.51% — really small shares. Over time, they had grown to $200,000 worth of stock. I kept that invested and never touched it. I started to actively invest in technology stocks and San Francisco real estate.

MarketWatch: Finally, you caught a break. San Francisco was a better investment for real estate than Detroit.

Stroh: I bought a flat and, later, bought a house. I was able to grow this money over a period of time. It acted as a nest egg for me. I knew if I lived carefully, it allowed me to be an artist. And I had a part-time job along the way.

MarketWatch: Do you still work part-time?

Stroh: I’m a landlord in San Francisco. I collect rent from some apartments I own in the city. That allows me to be an author and focus much of my attention on writing. It’s been a journey learning about finance and real estate and being independent. I had to figure it out on my own.

MarkeWatch: When I read about Stroh Brewery’s board turning down a billion-dollar offer for the company in the 1980s, even I felt the sting, and it wasn’t my money.

Stroh: Writing the book has been very instrumental in helping me move on from the sting. Even if we had taken that offer, it doesn’t mean that the money would have been invested prudently. That wasn’t the trend with the board or the family. I remind myself of that, and that helps.

The Stroh Brewery in Detroit. Eric Stroh

MarketWatch: Your mother was not always happy that your father spent money so freely, and she seemed to have a sense that the family fortune would not last forever.

Stroh: She definitely had her finger on the pulse when it came to where things were headed for the Stroh family. Activities like backgammon were ways she used of distracting herself from what was happening both emotionally and financially with the family.

MarketWatch: Your father was the polar opposite. You wrote that the Strohs lived like kings and that your father’s “notorious” collecting landed him on the A-list of every art dealer. But his overspending was — perhaps like many people who are shopaholics — emotional.

Stroh: On some level, he was neglected during his childhood. He was the youngest, and his father was running the brewery. My father was ultimately just trying to make up for the things he missed as a kid. He wasn’t allowed to listen to bluegrass music or dress up as a cowboy. So [as an adult] he started collecting guns from the Wild West and vintage Martin guitars, and filled the house with all these valuable assets.

MarketWatch: Your father used to play a kidnapping game when you were aged 5 or 6 to make sure you could identify and/or escape from a potential kidnapper.

Stroh: They were truly designed for me being kidnapped. Looking back, it was this bizarre theater, my father pretending to be a psychotic kidnapper, and to be left alone on the sidewalk as he was circling around the block. It stands out in my memory as being terrifying. My father told me we had to do that because “we can’t afford to pay the ransom.”

MarketWatch: That was your first lesson in finance!

Stroh: As a kid we have to put it all together. There were all these mixed messages around money.

MarketWatch: Your parents later divorced and your father married again without a prenuptial agreement to a woman close to your age, who, according to your book, actually wore an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt when she was in your school.

Stroh: They ended up having drinks in Nashville and having an impromptu wedding. It was a week before the prenup was supposed to be signed.

MarketWatch: Ouch!

Stroh: She did love him in her own way. I think she comes across as fairly sympathetic in the book. She received a guitar signed by Eric Clapton, among other things. She was pretty smart in the end.

MarketWatch: Do you ever go back to Detroit?

Stroh: Ten percent of the proceeds of the book go to 826michigan, a charity to support kids from underserved backgrounds, and I donated more than half of my advance from the book to charity. I feel very proud of this book. When I go back I always stay downtown. There is an explosive sense of potential that’s happening down there.

MarketWatch: What advice would you give other family-run companies?

Stroh: Expanding the pool in a search for CEO and opening it up to the best people out there in the world and not just choosing among family members.

MarketWatch: The story of Stroh’s Brewery and your family is really the story of Detroit and what millions of Americans have gone through on a much smaller scale in recent years.

Stroh: We made these brands that were so emblematic of the American dream itself. The collapse of these brands operated as a metaphor of what happened to this country. I had this impulse to get to the truth of what happened to my family and thought, “If I can do that, I can get to the truth of what happened to America.”

(This story was updated on April 25, 2017.)