A perfectly pitched tale of survival and the courage to move on.
In this sequel to the acclaimed Blackbird (2000), Lauck continues her disquieting, provocative memoir of a struggle to survive family treachery, abuse, and tragedy.
She picks up her story in 1975, when 11-year-old Jennifer and older brother Bryan are rescued by relatives from their cruel and capricious stepmother, Deb. Jennifer is sent to live with their dead father’s younger sister Peggy and her husband Dick in Black Sparks, Nevada. Aunt Peggy is a tightly wound woman subject to bursts of searing anger; Uncle Dick is a mean-spirited bully. Bryan, who has been taken in by Uncle Leonard and his wife Sylvia, an equally loathsome couple, now lives with them in Oklahoma. Jennifer tries to adjust to her new situation, as she helps out with baby Kimmy and does chores, but finds life little easier with Peggy and Dick than it was with Deb. The family moves to Washington State, where adolescent Jennifer finds her social life frequently limited by rigid strictures on socializing and by excessive work demands. She must call Dick Dad, and Peggy Mom, because they have officially adopted her. At the court hearing they promised to save Jennifer’s Social Security benefits so she could go to college, but when she graduates from high school, she learns they haven’t. She works two jobs while attending the local community college and moves out as soon as she can. But, despite her growing independence, a brief marriage, and a successful career as a journalist, she continues to be distressed by her troubled relationship with Bryan, who once claimed she made sexual advances to him. He enters a seminary, drops out, enrolls in college and then in 1984 commits suicide. By 2000, though happily remarried, Lauck decides to learn why Bryan killed himself, and in the search finds answers that explain and comfort.
A perfectly pitched tale of survival and the courage to move on.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-3965-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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