With a memorable cast of characters and telling detail, the author explores the “greatest lost-mine tradition of North...
Reynolds’ account of a lost-mine legend of the Old West and the gold fever it has sparked.
The Old West is a mother lode of colorful nonfiction, truth often obscured by layers of myth. Reynolds taps a particularly rich vein of lore in his riveting recap of “what has become the greatest, most vexing, and persistent lost-mine tradition of North American history.” The Lost Adams Diggings are named for John R. Adams, who, in 1864, escorted by “a half-breed Mexican-Indian with a crumpled ear,” led an expedition of 21 miners that apparently found nuggets of placer gold somewhere in the remote Mogollon Breaks straddling the border of New Mexico and Arizona. Apache raiders slaughtered 19 of the miners, leaving only Adams and one other man to tell the tale. According to Reynolds, another prospector, John Brewer, was actually the first to find the gold deposit three years earlier. His party, guided by the same “half-breed,” also fell afoul of the Apaches. In the 1880s, Reynolds says, he returned to the diggings and mined out what was left, making himself a tidy fortune. But ever since, a parade of gold seekers has been gripped by “Adams fever”; many have met an untimely end in the wilderness. Reynolds memorably chronicles this cast of characters with an eye for detail. The quest of Capt. Mike Cooney ended in November 1915, “his tongue as stiff as a piece of jerky.” Hackberry Campbell had “two burros—one carried grub, the other, whiskey. Sidekicks said he often ran out of the first but never the latter.” For Reynolds, the Lost Adams legend “helps define the history of the deepest corner of the great Southwest,” and he skillfully follows the historical threads, including the Apache wars that coincided with the expeditions of Brewer and Adams. The Apaches, he says, attacked the miners not for their gold, but for their supplies, particularly guns. Reynolds, a native of the Mogollon Breaks, has been researching the diggings for 60 years. While he hasn’t found the mother lode from which the placer deposits came, he’s struck gold with his tale of “blood and guts, hope and hardship, dust and disappointment.”
With a memorable cast of characters and telling detail, the author explores the “greatest lost-mine tradition of North American history.”Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1466952249
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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