A moving, horse-loving memoir that will speak even to nonriders.
Donley-Hayes reflects on her late friend and their lifelong relationship forged by their mutual love of horses.
“For Lash’s thirty-sixth, and final, birthday, I gave her a bullet-point list chronicling our lives together.” So begins the author’s memoir, a love letter to two of the dearest things in her life: Leslie (who changed her name to Ashley, then shortened it to Lash), whom the author calls “my best friend, confidant, sister I never had and true soul mate,” and horses. Physically, the two friends were opposites—Donley-Hayes describes herself as “obese,” while Lash was tall and lanky. Their relationship “evolved from summertime playmates to genuine friends, spending our summers riding or dreaming about horses, ogling boys, or weekends at Geauga Lake…” Their time together, tragically cut short by Lash’s death from breast cancer, was emotionally fraught, culminating in the author’s nightmares about preparing her dearest friend’s body for her casket. The constant in their lives was horses, which offer tailor-made life lessons that Donley-Hayes does not belabor. She and Lash shared the mantra “If you’re going to ride, you’re going to fall.” She continues, “We rode, and we fell. Always, we would get back on. We were there for each other in the days and weeks after those falls, when we first stuck foot in stirrup and climbed aboard again, small victories over the quivering infinite undercurrent of fear.” Donley-Hayes’ grappling with profound feelings of love, friendship, and loss will certainly resonate with those who share similar bonds in their lives. Those who love horses will easily identify with the author’s passion: “Woven throughout my entire life with Lash,” Donley-Hayes evocatively writes, “are horses, soft and strong and constant, different horses striding in and striding out through the years, a shimmering, sentient carousel, breathing, pulsing, rhythmic.”
A moving, horse-loving memoir that will speak even to nonriders.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 979-8985794144
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Milspeak Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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