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STEALING LOVE

Name: STEALING LOVE
Author: Mary A. Fischer
ISBN: 0-307-20987-3

CONFESSIONS OF A DOGNAPPER: A MEMOIR

by Mary A. Fischer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2006

A remarkable look at the injustices of the mental health and judicial systems.

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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

Categories:

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)