Smart, disarming, and forgivably sentimental.
A former television star who took to the trail extols a disappearing way of life.
Parker, star of ’80s detective drama Simon and Simon, has almost nothing to say about his acting career, other than to discuss why it eventually became enervating. Instead, his debut memoir begins when he leaves LA for parts just slightly east and deeper into the American West: the California ranch country of the Sierras. With his horse-loving wife Darleen, the author joins up with local cowboys, seeking to learn just how this quintessentially western job is done today. Whenever possible, he pitches in on cattle drives, helps out at brandings, looks on at auctions, and asks questions of men who excel in giving one- and two-word answers. Deeply enamored of this life rooted in the land, Parker takes the reader along on his beginner’s tour of the basics of the cowboy way. He may know little about herding balky cattle, avoiding cantankerous bulls, or heating branding irons, but he’s endlessly eager. Local trainers are profiled with deep admiration and respect. Cattlemen and cowboys are drawn with admiring strokes. The economics and politics of ranching, a true morass, are examined with a respectable attempt at evenhandedness. The habits of cows and horses come in for scrutiny, and Parker’s mare, Miss Flirt, is a character in her own right. The only digressions are periodic references to the traumatic shooting that resulted in a depression that led, in turn, to the author leaving Hollywood. Most of the limelight, however, is reserved for the cowmen. Perhaps most surprising are Parker’s writing chops: the language is expressive and intelligent, despite the author’s best efforts to imitate his laconic heroes.
Smart, disarming, and forgivably sentimental.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31024-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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
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
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