A compelling sports memoir from an intriguing athlete with a lot on his mind and even more in his heart.
The favorite son of Warroad, Minn., an NHL Hall of Famer, provides a thoroughly warm and engaging account of what it was like reaching for the highest echelons of professional hockey and what he found once he arrived.
Long before an opposing player from the Boston Bruins effectively ended his NHL career with a stick to the eye in 1975, Henry Boucha dedicated his life to the coldest game on Earth. This is Boucha’s personal, affecting story of stuffing oversized ice skates with newspaper and using homemade hockey sticks to bat around crushed soda cans until his young ears literally almost fell off from frostbite. “I can close my eyes and see it as if it was yesterday—a bright, crisp, clear night with a million stars shining down on the Warrroad River,” he recalls, “and the streetlights glistening on the ice as you glided around, and the sounds of your steel blades on the ice as you skated.” The purity of such transcendental moments is rendered all the more sublime when juxtaposed with the ugly racism and personal tragedies that also profoundly impacted Boucha, a Native American. Despite those magical times on the ice, he was often maligned, marginalized and made to feel inferior because of his proud heritage. A tragic series of devastating house fires also claimed the lives of some of the dearest people in the young hockey star’s life. Nevertheless, he persevered, steadily rising through the ranks of amateur hockey, absorbing the wonder of it all as he went on to win a spot on the 1972 Silver Medal U.S. Olympic hockey team. After that, it didn’t take long for the NHL to come calling. However, the 20-year-old quickly realized that the dream of playing for his favorite NHL team was a lot different than reality. Paradoxically, at the height of his professional career, young Boucha found himself lonely and depressed, with his marriage to his childhood sweetheart sinking fast. Meanwhile, the NHL of the 1970s that Boucha—the Detroit Red Wings’ Rookie of the Year for the 1972–73 season—describes was a rough-and-tumble, egocentric assemblage of personalities, where individual stats trumped team victories and helmets only impeded the flow of impressive manes.
A compelling sports memoir from an intriguing athlete with a lot on his mind and even more in his heart.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615717449
Page Count: 482
Publisher: Henry Boucha, Ojibwa, Native American Olympian
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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