by Leslie Rutkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2012
An emotional account that will particularly interest prisoners and their families.
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Rutkin’s debut memoir recalls her yearlong separation from her husband, a cop, as he was imprisoned for stealing money from drug dealers.
In 1976, the author’s new husband, Matthew Smith, was indicted on charges of grand larceny—just four days into their honeymoon. After a drug bust the previous year, five officers had stolen $30,000 in cash from the suspects; Smith’s share of the take had been $3,000. (“They weren’t doing anything different than anyone else on the job,” he later told Rutkin for this book.) Smith refused to turn state’s evidence against other cops, and beginning in September 1977, he served 366 days in prison. Rutkin was understandably angry, as well as sad, lonely, and worried; she also had financial troubles, including bankruptcy, to handle. But she was determined to bolster her husband through his depression, isolation, shame, and fear. The couple wrote to each other nearly every day in letters filled “with our love and longing, with day-to-day, hour-to-hour chronologies of our comings and goings.” Over time, Rutkin learned to address her own emotional needs and detach when cheering up her husband became exhausting. At length, the couple resumed a normal life after his release in 1978, and they’re still married today. Although readers may not have much sympathy for Smith at first, his letters and Rutkin’s writing provide a balanced view of events. Extracts from Smith’s well-written letters give readers vivid glimpses of prison life—jobs, friendships, his attempts to better his placement—as well as of his own feelings; they portray a sensitive, intelligent man with a deep need for belonging. Rutkin’s contemporary comments strengthen the memoir by adding nuance to the story told in the letters: “I choke on the dreams that flit through them…I get dizzy with these pages and pages of pie-in-the-sky affirmations.” But although the book is insightful, some readers may not find the separation to be as significant as Rutkin does, due to its relative brevity.
An emotional account that will particularly interest prisoners and their families.Pub Date: May 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4685-3921-9
Page Count: 328
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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