An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.
A writer recollects an astonishingly dysfunctional childhood under the violent, criminal tyranny of his father.
According to debut author Crow, his father, Thurston, was as intelligent as he was dangerous—apparently the bearer of an uncommonly high IQ, he was also alarmingly volatile. Thurston spent time in prison for nearly beating a man to death and often bragged about other murders he committed or planned to perpetrate. He was also an unrepentant thief who recruited the author to be his accomplice in crime. When Crow was not yet 4 years old, Thurston confided in him that he would soon get rid of Thelma Lou, the author’s mother. Thurston finally forced Crow to orchestrate their abandonment of her. Thelma Lou was mentally disturbed, and her combination of incompetence and motherly negligence consistently endangered her children. The author idolized his father, nevertheless, and pined to become “smart and strong and brave” just like Thurston, sometimes perversely winning his praise for ungovernable mischievousness. Crow struggled at school—he was diagnosed with dyslexia—but still managed to graduate from college and eventually win a position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture administration. But Thurston’s madness continued to haunt the author—his father tried to pull Crow’s sister, Sally, into a conspiracy to commit a crime. The author finally felt the need to stop his father and found the courage to try. Crow’s memoir is cinematically gripping—the depth of Thurston’s sociopathic depravity is as riveting as it is repulsive. The author deftly relates that his father conceived the conspiracy with cunning cynicism: “Dad’s logic was simple: He knew that if he involved Sally…she would ask for my help, even when she swore to keep silent. And he knew that I wouldn’t let anything happen to Sally.” Crow writes with confessional frankness and affectingly depicts a childhood lost to emotional and physical abuse. He also thoughtfully captures life on a Native American reservation—Crow partially grew up on a Navajo one.
An extraordinary remembrance that’s both gut-wrenching and inspiring.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9974871-7-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sandra Jonas Publishing House
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.
Ten homespun personal essays—most published elsewhere—from the author of last year’s acclaimed novel Jim the Boy.
Earley grew up in a small-town, kudzu-covered corner of North Carolina more recognizable as the terrain of Thomas Wolfe than that of Dorothy Allison. Seven of these pieces explore his early years there, as a 1960s television acolyte, a squirrel-hunting dilettante, and, through it all, an astute, heartbreaking observer of the idiosyncratic people around him. The title story, which appeared in Harper’s, serves as an introduction to this American boyhood, wholly transformed by a color, Zenith television set, replete with rooftop antenna. As the cornerstone entry here, a masterful exercise in metaphor, it’s hard to imagine what more the author could have to articulate about his young life. But Earley thankfully only has more trenchant memories to spin. With “Hallway,” in an equally unadorned language, but with more deeply felt remembrances, Earley recalls, with a child’s perception, his extended family’s peculiarities and his own fearful awe of his grandfather. A look at the odd Scots-derived Appalachian dialect of his youth (“The Quare Gene”) leads to a reflection on the “shared history” that the author is losing with his highland ancestors. A similar wistfulness pervades “Granny’s Bridge,” a tribute to a time when crossing a bridge—and certainly not one to the 21st century—could enhance a person’s outlook. In “Ghost Stories,” Earley takes his wife to New Orleans to investigate the haunted city: “We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.” And the final piece (“Tour de Fax”), another gem from Harper’s, follows him on a record-setting circumnavigational flight, recorded stop by stop in under 32 hours. Earley’s skewering of the trip’s corporate sponsors is good fun, and his capstone epiphany—that where he ended up, at home, is the only place he’d fly around the world to get to—rings true.
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.Pub Date: May 25, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-302-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James...
The memoirs of actress and author Drinkwater (Molly on the Run, 1996), best known for her role as Helen Herriot in the 1980s TV series All Creatures Great and Small.
Although the author plays down the importance of her life as an actress, it was through acting that she met her husband, Michel, a film producer. Leaving behind the tinsel of Cannes, the two wandered the back roads of southern France and found an abandoned villa attached to ten acres of old olive trees. The bucolic setting and the vision of themselves as custodians of the land led them to purchase the villa in one fell swoop, but real day-to-day life on the farm proved resistant to their romantic visions. The house hadn’t been lived in for years; simply establishing water and electricity service turned out to be a major job. Refurbishing an old swimming pool was an even more expensive (some might say prodigal) effort. In spite of her successful acting career, and her husband’s ongoing film projects, financial woes soon presented themselves—at least until money flowed in from one of the author’s residuals checks or Michel signed a new contract. Eventually the problems were solved and the grove was producing the finest olive oil in the region, mainly because of the Drinkwaters’ hard work, but even more because of their ability to hire the right people to help out—such as René (who knew just about everything there was to know about olives) and Quashia (an itinerant Algerian with a tragic past). In the end, not surprisingly, the story seems rather like a movie.
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James Herriot groupies.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58567-106-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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