bookshelf

RISING ABOVE

Name: RISING ABOVE
Author: Bruno DeLuca
ISBN: 978-1-5246-5963-9

A MEMOIR ABOUT FAMILY BETRAYAL, AND GROWING INTO FORGIVENESS

by Bruno DeLuca ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2017

A funny, infuriating, and engrossing tale of family betrayal and accord, though not quite reconciliation.

bookshelf

An idealistic, hardworking Italian-Canadian finally decides to defy his domineering father in this debut memoir.

DeLuca’s story actually starts with the immigration of his father, Giovanni, from Italy to the United States at age 16. Giovanni then slipped over the border to Canada after beating up a menacing, racist police officer. The fact that DeLuca even now doesn’t know the whole story sets the pattern for a nearly constant lack of communication between father and son. DeLuca and his brother toiled in Giovanni’s bakery, which became popular and successful, and yet it seemed that the two young men never had any money. DeLuca was sought after as a pastry chef, but he could never satisfy the arrogant Giovanni or win his affection. In his work, the author recalls his struggles to please this womanizing braggart while supporting his humiliated mother, until the day DeLuca walked away from the family business and his duties as a pastry chef for the rest of his life. Mocked by Giovanni, DeLuca worked in management at a “big box” bakery and married a divorcée, which scandalized his traditional relatives. Pulled in one direction by his obsessive desire to get even with Giovanni, in another by a wife who, having left her own difficult marriage, counseled her husband to quit trying to change his father, and haunted by guilt, DeLuca drew on his faith in God to strive for some sort of peace in the family. But not before his rage threatened to estrange him from the clan entirely. Action-oriented and heartfelt, this book offers an intriguing look at the difficult life of a self-employed baker. The 18 emotional chapters, each headed by a Bible verse (heavy on Psalms and Ecclesiastes, with one from Job), recount office politics, sexual temptations, unreasonable customers, and neighborhood loyalty. Giovanni is still alive, and in an Afterword, DeLuca decides to finally forgive his father. Toward the end of the memoir, the author’s list of grievances becomes rather histrionic and interrupts the story. While the squabbling remains episodic, DeLuca eventually shows maturity and delivers a sardonic self-assessment.

A funny, infuriating, and engrossing tale of family betrayal and accord, though not quite reconciliation.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5963-9

Page Count: 108

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)