Epistolary testimony to affection and the power of communication.
A charming collection of heartfelt love letters from the early 1940s.
Rowe’s debut memoir is an epistolary tale of love and history as told through her father-in-law’s devoted letters to one of his sweethearts, Wanda. Starting in January 1942, Ed Rowe dashed a quick word to Wanda detailing the end of his first year in medical school, the reason he was in Galveston, Texas. As Ed made his way through the challenges of medical school, he shared his worries and triumphs with Wanda, who lived in Fairfield, Texas. The letters span a year and include anecdotes from Ed’s classes at medical school, book recommendations, and humorous tidbits about Ed’s roommates. His playfulness is apparent when he cites an account of one young man cutting the hair of another: “The radio was playing some swingy tune, and I don’t know whether the ‘barber’ knew it or not, but his hand in which he had the scissors was keeping time to the music and cutting hair all at once. You can imagine how wavy the other fellow’s hair is now.” His playful nature resurfaces when he says: “I had to stop writing a minute to throw some firecrackers at my roommate while he was in the shower. You should have seen him jump.” Amid Ed’s amusing and carefree writing is the serious undercurrent of oncoming war and registering for service in the Army. His personal story is peppered with references that sing of a different time, chronicling the simplicity of the ’40s. He writes with candor about his anxiety over his exams, his love for his friends, and his wistfulness for Wanda. Taking readers from his first year at medical school to his working in a children’s hospital, the letters eventually reveal his marriage. In a world where letter writing is almost obsolete, the charm of these handwritten notes, reprinted and transposed for the book, speaks of a different era and a lost art.
Epistolary testimony to affection and the power of communication.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5035-5724-6
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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