The eldest daughter of TV actor/writer/director/producer Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, etc.) tells her side of the Landon story—and tells her father's as best she can. Wilson is the daughter of Landon's second wife, Marjorie Lynn Noe, and has eight siblings or quasi-siblings. Landon, dying of cancer at 54, expressed his regret to Wilson that he'd not been allowed by her biological father to adopt her—but that she'd always been his daughter anyway. With this book, she returns the favor by protecting and honoring Landon's memory and by showing how he was her dad even though she'd had weekend contact with her biological father during her mother's marriage to Landon—who had his problems. The son of a mentally disturbed woman, he popped pills during his early years on Bonanza and never gave up heavy use of cheap vodka. But friends and others envied his Romeo-and-Juliet tie with Marjorie, an immense lovey-doveyness that would not allow his eyes to leave her. Landon clearly was a marvelous father to all his children, and much of his home life became grist for scripts he wrote and directed for his various series. Wilson's darkest moment came with an auto accident that killed her three fellow passengers and nearly killed her, and that left her with lifelong pain and a dependency on Percodan. Her use of the painkiller got out of hand and she had to enter rehab. Another tough time came when Landon left Marjorie for his young third wife. The kids were hurt, but the younger ones recovered as part of Landon's new and growing family- -although Wilson felt whipped when Landon shrank her inheritance to much less than expected. The high points here are quite moving, especially Landon going on The Tonight Show to fight the tabloids two months before dying. Well done. (Photos—24 pp. b&w—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-79352-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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