Jacob Marley's injunction that we all bear the chains we forge in life could be the lesson of Cammermeyer's life story. But like Scrooge, she shows that we all have the power to break those chains and find happiness. Cammermeyer, the Army reservist who challenged the military policy on homosexuality, was born in 1942 in Norway and spent her early childhood under the Nazi occupation while her parents participated in the Resistance. The daughter of a stern, undemonstrative father and a subservient mother, she spent her youth in a household where only the male children ``counted.'' After the family moved to America in the early 1950s, she decided to go to medical school, following in the footsteps of her father, a prominent neurological research scientist. When poor grades in college put an end to that dream, Cammermeyer, by then a naturalized citizen, enlisted in the Army, and became a nurse. During a tour of duty in Germany, she met and married her husband, another officer. Though their marriage was plagued from the beginning, she was determined to be a good wife. When her husband was sent to Vietnam, she volunteered as well. Upon returning, both of them, who believed in the US mission in Southeast Asia, were shocked by the naãvetÇ of the American public. Though they raised a family and lived in a dream house, the couple finally divorced when she was 38. A few years later, Cammermeyer finally found fulfillment in a relationship with a woman. She also pursued her military career. During a routine interview for a higher security clearance, she admitted that she was a lesbian and was discharged. She set out to challenge the action in court and was eventually vindicated and ordered reinstated. Appeals continue, however, and she remains out of uniform. Her story is scheduled to appear as an NBC TV movie in February 1995. Cammermeyer tells her story with clarity and sincerity. Despite coauthor Fisher's somewhat repetitive style, the book has a power that brings readers along on this courageous soldier's journey. (16 pages of b&w photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-85167-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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