There’s plenty of pain and pleasure tucked within the details of this transcendent jailhouse memoir.
A writer’s agonizing journey through “four different New York State prisons over the span of nearly two years.”
During a particularly bleak decade in his life—during which three chapters of his biography of Timothy McVeigh were plagiarized and published in a book by a different author and publisher, without consequence, and he fell into the grip of substance abuse—journalist Stickney lost everything, including his marriage. A string of arrests and a 2014 conviction for selling drugs to an undercover police officer sent him to prison. A raw and engaging narrative that lays bare the unvarnished truths behind both addiction and incarceration, the book retraces the episodes and experiences he endured while serving his sentence. The thrust of the memoir, however, involves Stickney’s belief that he would not have survived without the intervention, assistance, and street-smart counsel of four inmates and a corrections officer, all of whom “kept [him] from going crazy.” Stickney was immediately befriended by a part Native, part Italian inmate named Bear while “Pastor Mark,” who was serving time for having a sex-charged online conversation with a 14-year-old girl who turned out to be an undercover cop, encouraged and stoked the author’s faith with a stack of Bibles and some stern words of wisdom. Gummy, one of his bunkmates, dispensed the kind of homespun wisdom that grounded Stickney when his behavior and his patience needed reining in. A convivial highway drifter named Gandhi delivered mystical guidance while Valefor, an uncommonly fair-minded, approachable corrections officer, offered protection and friendly control. Stickney refreshingly avoids sermonizing, accepting full responsibility for his wrongdoings, and his memoir rests on the gratitude he expresses for the five men who served as guideposts of hope and direction. Amid the prison theatrics, the author also delivers eye-opening facts (“many inmates are homeless upon release”), well-considered personal reflection, and the kind of intensive growth that he acknowledges was sorely needed in his life.
There’s plenty of pain and pleasure tucked within the details of this transcendent jailhouse memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61088-196-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.
The bestselling author recalls her childhood and her family’s wartime experiences.
Readers of Winspear’s popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series appreciate the London investigator’s canny resourcefulness and underlying humanity as she solves her many cases. Yet Dobbs had to overcome plenty of hardships in her ascent from her working-class roots. Part of the appeal of Winspear’s Dobbs series are the descriptions of London and the English countryside, featuring vividly drawn particulars that feel like they were written with firsthand knowledge of that era. In her first book of nonfiction, the author sheds light on the inspiration for Dobbs and her stories as she reflects on her upbringing during the 1950s and ’60s. She focuses much attention on her parents’ lives and their struggles supporting a family, as they chose to live far removed from their London pasts. “My parents left the bombsites and memories of wartime London for an openness they found in the country and on the land,” writes Winspear. As she recounts, each of her parents often had to work multiple jobs, which inspired the author’s own initiative, a trait she would apply to the Dobbs character. Her parents recalled grueling wartime experiences as well as stories of the severe battlefield injuries that left her grandfather shell-shocked. “My mother’s history,” she writes, “became my history—probably because I was young when she began telling me….Looking back, her stories—of war, of abuse at the hands of the people to whom she and her sisters had been billeted when evacuated from London, of seeing the dead following a bombing—were probably too graphic for a child. But I liked listening to them.” Winspear also draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system.
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-269-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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