A biography that reluctantly digs the dirt—and there's an awful lot of it—on famed Kenyan-born aviatrix Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly the Atlantic and once the presumed author of the bestselling West with the Night. Long-time Kenya resident Trzebinski (The Kenya Pioneers, 1986; Silence will Speak, 1978), who knew Markham, draws on letters, diaries, and copious interviews to tell his subject's story. Throughout, we're reminded of Markham's difficult childhood: Abandoned by her wealthy English mother at age two, young Beryl was left to be raised by her father, his mistress, and the Africans on their farm. Markham received little formal education and even fewer notions of conventional piety and morality, but her father did teach her to ride and train horses, a skill that would provide her with a living throughout her life. But despite Trzebinski's patronizing plea that Markham's behavior was affected by her being more African than European, the aviatrix proved to be single-minded and often cruel in pursuit of what she wanted. She abandoned three husbands, one son, and numerous lovers (the Prince of Wales and his younger brother each became her lover while visiting Kenya); she betrayed friends like Karen Blixen, whose great love, Denys Finch Hatton, she seduced behind Blixen's back; and she never admitted that her third husband, Hollywood screenwriter Raoul Schumacher, wrote West with the Night. Trzebinski's evidence for all this is well documented and very persuasive—but to balance the heavy indictment, the author also emphasizes Markham's great courage, beauty, and charm. All the seamy settler shenanigans of life in Kenyan highlands are reprised in this gossipy, exhaustively researched Beryl Dearest. Another cult figure bites the dust. (Photos)
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03556-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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