A scattershot but edgy memoir, marked by wit and poignancy.
A veterinarian reflects on a life enriched by horses, cats, and dogs in this debut memoir.
Carlson grew up in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, but in 1968, when she was 15, she visited her adored uncle, Tom, in Fort Collins, Colorado, and became smitten with the West. She later attended Colorado State University and received her degree in teaching physical education. During her senior year, she met her future husband, Earl, then in his freshman year at the veterinary college. Inspired by Earl’s example, she went back to school to acquire the science credits necessary to apply to the veterinary school; later, she began the training that would lead to her opening an all-feline private veterinary practice in Fort Collins. However, the heart of her story rests with the animals—particularly those who were part of her own family, from her first cat, Pruney, to her most recent dog, Ivy, as well as a series of beloved horses. Two of these horses, Franny and Marcie, were inseparable to the degree that they had to be ridden together to remain calm. In a momentary lapse of judgment, Carlson took Marcie out alone: “All of a sudden, while standing still, Marcie bucked just once, and I flew off into outer space...then she bolted and ran off through the streets of Fort Collins.” Earl later found Marcie at home; she’d returned to Franny. Plenty of other animal antics are on full, delightful display throughout these pages—and so is the pain of losing them, always affectingly related by the author. There’s also considerable space devoted to the rigors of veterinary school, as well as Carlson’s endurance of and recovery from hip surgery. Throughout the book, she pulls no punches when relating difficulties that she’s faced over the years, including her discord with members of her late husband’s family. She compensates for some confusing chronological whipsawing during the early chapters with an engaging overall narrative, which includes numerous tales of other people’s four-legged companions.
A scattershot but edgy memoir, marked by wit and poignancy.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-431-8
Page Count: 273
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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