Love, marriage, and bigamy are unearthed in this fascinating, well-crafted biography.
Simmons’ biography of a family friend is both a history and detective story.
Eva Eldridge grew up on a farm in eastern Oregon, a typical 1930s teen who expected to marry a local boy. When World War II took her fiance overseas, she moved to Portland to do war work at a shipyard. Her life never returned to the expected formula, as she enjoyed her independence (“this type of reckless, carefree, independent life has me pretty well under its power. I love it & I love Portland and I’d hate to give it up,” wrote Eldridge in a letter). At the age of 34, Eldridge was working at a cigar stand in the swanky Hotel Boise in Idaho where a handsome stranger was employed as a chef. A few months later, in March 1957, Eldridge fell madly in love with and married this man, Virgil (Vick) Vickers. After a year, Vickers disappeared without warning and was gone without a trace until 1959, when Eldridge received a letter from Odette, a woman who had also been married to, and deserted by, Vickers. Odette sent evidence of a string of wives; Vickers was a serial bigamist. Working from hundreds of pieces of Eldridge’s personal correspondence, Simmons pieces together how Eldridge ended up where she did, laying out an enthralling plot that travels between multiple timelines with confidence. The author’s perceptive social history explores the ways in which marriage was idealized after the war and used to lure women back to the home after getting a taste of freedom and self-determination. Eldridge’s letters are a treasure trove of information, but Simmons also does a huge amount of detective work, hitting the archives to fill in many blanks. She tracks down most of Vickers’s wives and descendants, finding evidence of two additional marriages. Any flaws are minor, including the author’s over-enthusiasm to psychoanalyze Vickers and the scant attention given to Eldridge’s 1946 marriage to a sailor and the surprising discovery of their child, who was given up for adoption.
Love, marriage, and bigamy are unearthed in this fascinating, well-crafted biography.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: 9781609384616
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
Much-honored sf/fantasy writer Davidson (1923—93) was also a master of the mystery short story, argues his friend Richard Lupoff in his warmly appreciative introduction, and adduces in evidence 13 stories ranging in their settings from China to Olde New York, and running from a new twist on the old tale of the vanished bride to a grimly satisfying anecdote of slavery and the law.
Pub Date: Feb. 5, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-19931-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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