Alternately witty and touching; a hope-infused road map for seniors.
Part memoir, part tribute to the sprightly and high-spirited centenarian Lucille Fleming.
When Gaman, a wellness expert based in Texas, was collecting information for her book Age to Perfection: How to Thrive to 100, Happy, Healthy, and Wise (2013), she was introduced to Lucille Fleming, who had just celebrated her 100th birthday. Gaman felt an instant connection: “It didn’t feel like I was meeting her for the first time; instead, it felt like I had known her my whole life.” This initial encounter between two women separated in age by almost six decades led to a deep and profound friendship (“I had never had a best friend or a mentor like her”), lovingly recounted in this uplifting chronicle. Gaman began visiting Lucille on a regular basis, and when Age to Perfection was published, including a section about Lucille, she brought the first copy to her new friend. Next came an opportunity for Lucille to appear in television interviews about the book; she was delighted with her newfound celebrity, charming all who crossed her path. They began dining out for lunch almost every Friday, a ritual they continued for more than three years, sharing their thoughts, feelings, and secrets. The descriptive (sometimes-overdetailed) prose—“She was dressed to the nines in red high heels and a colorful red and white flowing skirt, a red silk blouse, a string of pearls and had perfect hair and red lipstick”— captures Lucille so thoroughly readers can almost hear her infectious giggle. Here is Lucille, exhibiting her typical exuberant humor, explaining why she always keeps one of her wigs on the bedside table at night: “If I need an ambulance, it’s right there. A girl shouldn’t be caught dead without her hair!” While the author’s frequent complaints about her own mother (a compulsive workaholic) wear thin, the voice of Lucille—with her joyful embrace of each day and appreciation for adventure—will grab readers. Introduction by Suzanne Somers.
Alternately witty and touching; a hope-infused road map for seniors.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 381
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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