A sometimes-compelling, if occasionally uneven, personal faith history.
Hackard offers a spiritually informed memoir that draws upon his Catholic faith.
The author has spent more than 50 years working as an attorney specializing in elder law in California. This book focuses on his religious journey, namely the roles that faith and spiritual encounters have played in his life. He notes that he was a devout Catholic from an early age and that he first encountered his guardian angel in 1956, when he was 6, after learning the traditional Guardian Angel prayer in the Sacramento Catholic school he attended. The author goes on to write of the power of prayer during his upbringing, which he says served as a firm foundation amid life’s challenges and inevitable losses. He also writes of the many tragedies faced by his Irish family and the resilience they’ve shown in the face of struggle. Through joys and sorrows, his family has shown great determination, he says, as well as an uncanny ability to foresee future events. One relative, he writes, accurately prophesized the early deaths of multiple siblings from various causes in the early 20th century. Faith also served as a rock in his life during other crises that didn’t involve his family; he writes, for instance, of the fear he felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962: Hackard prayed by himself in church, asking for divine intervention to keep the world from being destroyed. When the Soviet ships turned around and headed home, his deep belief in the power of prayer during moments of danger was strengthened.
The author also describes the fear he often felt as an attorney during his career; he played a minor role in the Charles Manson case, which led to a break-in at his offices by people looking for the Manson files, among other threats. His fears for himself and his wife led him to lean even more firmly into his faith as a source of stability. In his discussion of his legal career, Hackard writes of the importance of having a firm sense of justice, as well as a desire for truth. He also delves into other crises, including near-financial ruin during the 2008 financial meltdown, but the minutiae of some stories make them less compelling than other parts of the book. The work concludes with several sections focused on Hackard’s prayer life. He discusses the role of praying the rosary on a daily basis and writes of another prayer by the famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton on the uncertainty of life; a prayer of St. Francis of Assisi’s calling for love and light in the world receives significant attention as well. Overall, the book will appeal most to readers interested in the intersection of devotionals and memoir. Hackard writes explicitly for a Catholic audience, making use of the language of the Church in much of his writing, which may create a barrier to entry to other readers. Still, it’s a mostly engaging remembrance whose sections about the author’s life as a lawyer offer notable excitement.
A sometimes-compelling, if occasionally uneven, personal faith history.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798994936009
Page Count: 110
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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