A thoughtfully composed, heart-rending read best for fellow travelers.
Heiler shares her emotionally intense recollections of the two-year period during which she cared for her dying husband.
In the spring of 2021, the author and her husband, Al, had been married for 23 years (and together for almost 28 years) when they received his devastating diagnosis of a terminal illness: “Stage IV lung cancer, with possibly six to twelve months to live.” It was her third marriage, his second. Heiler was the one to end her first marriage. She writes that Paul, the father of her four children, was a kind and gentle man, but she was suffocating and needed to spread her wings. She left Paul the house and kept the children to pursue a successful career in real estate. Her second husband turned out to be a mean drunk, per the author; after six years, he was killed in an automobile accident. When Heiler met Al, she was dating, but not committed. He, on the other hand, was only two months widowed, still grieving the loss of his wife of 33 years yet ready to move on. After living together for four years, waiting impatiently for his two grown sons to accept their relationship, they married on April 4, 1998. With dry humor, the author describes their first 20 years together as “pretty darn nice.” Indeed, it was a loving marriage, and the two lived lavishly. Their primary house was located on Florida’s Lake Jovita Golf and Country Club; they had Al’s Gulf Coast beach house; and they built a summer home in North Carolina. In between work, Al’s golfing, and socializing, they traveled the world. They also weathered some major bumps along the road—each of them was treated for a variety of cancers. But this time, there would be no recovery, and life would never be the same. Al outlived the original prognosis, but after two years of treatment, struggle, denial, despair, and finally acceptance, Al died at home in May of 2023.
Heiler is an articulate and confident author. Her memoir has been culled from her voluminous daily diary entries and the copious poetry she wrote during Al’s last years, supplemented with contemporary commentary. Never leaving Al’s side, the author became his caretaker and patient advocate, and she includes numerous medical details, descriptions of procedures, and terminology that defined this period. Writing with passion and raw honesty, Heiler brings readers along with her through each twist of the emotional roller coaster that the couple’s lives had become, and through the early aftermath of her debilitating grief, during which she holed up alone in their North Caroline house: “I want to reach out to my children and help them because I know they are grieving. But I’m just too absorbed in my own pain.” Thankfully, the author also shares her delightfully sharp humor and her defiant determination to find happiness once again; (“exactly eleven weeks and one day”) after Al died, Heiler met Bob, the man who would become her new love.
A thoughtfully composed, heart-rending read best for fellow travelers.Pub Date: April 30, 2025
ISBN: 9798281255578
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2025
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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