A remarkable look at the injustices of the mental health and judicial systems.
Journalist Fischer embraces her anguished past to champion underdogs both human and canine.
The title is misleading: The author did rescue several dogs belonging to an abusive neighbor, but that’s not the main focus of her debut memoir. In 1955, the Fischer family moved from the Bay Area to a suburban house with a pool in sunny San Fernando Valley. On the surface, everything seemed idyllic, until Mary’s maternal grandmother, diagnosed with stomach cancer, moved in with the family. When Mary’s mother succumbed to grief after Nanna’s death, her husband committed her to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. She would remain there, receiving multiple electroshock treatments, for the next decade. Her daughters would see her only twice during that time. Within months, their father sent Mary and her older sister, Kate, to the Ramona Convent boarding school, where they, too, would spend nearly a decade. Both girls suffered greatly from the stigma of having a “crazy” mother and from their removal from home. Later, they were allowed to live with their father while attending an all-girls Catholic high school. Out of these dysfunctional beginnings grew the author’s interest in righting wrongs. After floundering for a few years, she wrote a few stories for the local paper and moved to New York City to work as a freelancer. Four years later, she returned to Los Angeles for her big break. It was 1984, and the McMartin preschool molestation story had just made headlines. The McMartins were mostly vilified in the press, but Fischer was one of the very few journalists who questioned the bizarre accusations. After researching the story for months, she published her doubts in Los Angeles magazine. The thoughtful piece generated national attention and helped turn public perception in favor of the McMartins, who were finally—after years—acquitted. But during this time of professional blossoming, both of Mary’s parents died, and she completely severed ties with her sister.
A remarkable look at the injustices of the mental health and judicial systems.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-20987-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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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