Remarkably honest, powerful, and vivid.
In this memoir, a woman recounts her escape from an armed robber and her physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery from the experience.
In October 2008, Diana Martin was facing the stress of a tanking real estate market after having gone into business full time as a house flipper—buying, renovating, remodeling, and selling properties. She’d always paid her bills and had good credit, but with three mortgages and no buyers, she was facing foreclosure and bankruptcy. So, when a man—The Guy, as she mostly refers to him—knocked on the door, grasping one of her flyers, she was hopeful. And then she felt the handgun at her head. She fought back, getting pistol-whipped into concussion and broken teeth; the robber zip-tied her hands together and demanded money. Following an inner voice, Martin ran, screaming, and escaped, finding safety with a neighbor. In fiction, the story would be over—but as Martin ably shows in this gripping memoir, recovery from trauma is not that simple. Returning home, she notices her cats’ food bowls “filled halfway with my dark, almost black, blood….They never show that part in the movies, people cleaning up their own mess.” Having fought off one robber, Martin also had the “overpaid thieves” of Wall Street ruining her prospects. All she wanted to do was sleep on her lovely couch, named Marilyn for its seductive curves, but she had to start a new profession (which didn’t go smoothly) and endure the extended stress of The Guy’s trial. Readers will admire Martin’s tenacity, honesty, and humor, as when first confronted by The Guy: “Whoa, he wanted money from me? Get in line, buddy.” Each insight is hard-won, and Martin limns the slow process well. She also describes images from meditation that have poetic resonance. The second half of the book is perhaps overdetailed, but this can be understood: Martin commits to fully tracing the difficulties she faced. This is that rare inspirational book without a trace of pink-cloud saccharinity.
Remarkably honest, powerful, and vivid.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BellaVista Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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