A heartwarming and nostalgic book to appeal to horse lovers and fans of the author’s previous books.
The bestselling author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion and The Perfect Horse returns with another uplifting story of horses and determination.
Letts narrates the tale of Annie Wilkins. In 1954, after being diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis, the 63-year-old Mainer "took her dog and got on a horse" and rode all the way to California. In the small town of Minot, Wilkins had lived in poverty on the family farm, with no electricity or running water. After her uncle died and she received her grim prognosis, which rendered her unable to look after the farm, she decided to live out a childhood dream to “see the Pacific Ocean at least once in my life.” She used most of the money she got from selling the family farm to buy Tarzan, a horse destined for the slaughterhouse, and set out for California, leading her beloved small mutt, Depeche Toi, on a clothesline leash. Newspaper reporters transformed her into a celebrity whose story brightened the lives of Americans living through the nightmare of the McCarthy era and earned her the gift of a companion horse for Tarzan named Rex from a small Tennessee community. In 1955, she appeared on Art Linkletter's popular TV show People Are Funny. “Linkletter,” writes the author, “immediately understood Annie’s essential Americanness: her authority came precisely from the fact that her journey was neither choreographed nor staged. Here was a woman who was doing something just because she wanted to do it.” This engaging folk-hero biography, which follows Wilkins throughout her grand adventure, also touches on the cultural history of mid-20th-century America. As Letts delves into the postwar prosperity that transformed the U.S. into a land of cars and endless highways, she celebrates the dying tradition of the “American tramp or hobo” that Wilkins, the self-christened "Last of the Saddle Tramps," represented.
A heartwarming and nostalgic book to appeal to horse lovers and fans of the author’s previous books.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-61932-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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