Bobby Fischer was a master chess player, a man who once seemed the epitome of control. But Fischer's personal life was often chaotic and marked by mystery.

Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Nicholas and his wife, Clea Benson, also a reporter, spent years researching Fischer's life, digging through public records and conducting dozens of interviews with people who knew the Fischer family, discovering, among other things, that "Bobby was lied to most of his life about who his real father was."

Fischer was raised by a single mother, Regina Fischer. She was an internationally traveled physician who had worked in Moscow. For the era, that meant she might likely be an investigative target of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which was constantly on the hunt for communists in America.

The documents shed a fantastic light on Bobby's upbringing.

Regina tried to create a loving home for her children. She raised Bobby and his older sister, Joan, in a sparse Brooklyn apartment. It was Joan who taught Bobby how to play chess....