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A Walk Through Minden

Name: A Walk Through Minden
Author: Lillian (Sissy Crone) Frazer
ISBN: 978-1-5049-7080-8

IN THE LIVES OF THE CRONE AND VEGH FAMILIES

by Lillian (Sissy Crone) Frazer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 2016

Firsthand recollections of communal spirit enliven a sometimes-slow text.

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A family history that digs deep into an isolated Appalachian mining community.

Debut author Frazer grew up in the small mining community of Minden, West Virginia, when coal was still king in Appalachia. At the time of the 1950 census, 28 percent of the male population of Fayette County was employed in the mines, including Frazer’s father. This book offers a thoroughly researched, if somewhat plodding, family history that fondly recalls the camaraderie—and grime—of life in an isolated coal camp. Waste from the mines, she writes, was “piled high” on the hillside behind her house, “letting off a burning, stinky smoke constantly hovering over Minden....I remember thinking that this must be what I hear others talk about as Hell.” The first half of the book painstakingly describes the emigration of her ancestors from central Europe, their early struggles as farmers in Virginia, and the impact of the Civil War. There are some interesting revelations here; for example, Frazer’s sixth removed grandfather, a former indentured servant, owned slaves, and her grandfather joined the Ku Klux Klan, apparently “as a constructive way to ensure the safety of his family.” But the book’s dearth of local color and context makes for heavy reading. Things pick up, however, once the author, one of seven children, takes center stage; her firsthand presence lends some immediacy to the mining-town memories. The family’s home, she says, was company property and “Company houses in Minden eventually changed colors from white to gray as the coal dust, soot, and burning slate settled on the homes.” The outdoor toilet served all nine family members and many days they took “a bucket or pail of water, soap and wash cloth to take a ‘spit bath.’ ” On one occasion, Frazer’s brothers dug a hole to where they believed a neighbor was storing moonshine: “they find no moonshine. They do discover a usable toilet.” The Minden mines closed in 1955 and none of Frazer’s family members now work in the industry. But in this memoir, she tells of how the mining life “will always be part of us. Those ties are too strong to break.”

Firsthand recollections of communal spirit enliven a sometimes-slow text.

Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7080-8

Page Count: 162

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)