by Muffy Mead-Ferro ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2012
A mostly dull rendering of the author’s attempt to “live up to [her] birthright.”
Plodding memoir about a woman's Wyoming childhood and her adult attempts to live up to her ranching heritage.
When bestselling author Mead-Ferro (Confessions of a Slacker Wife, 2005, etc.) unexpectedly received the clothes in which her ranchwoman mother Mary had died, she was on the verge of giving up her cattle ranch. She had returned to her native Wyoming with her family to make a part-time go at the profession that had defined her parents, especially her mother, but setbacks and doubts about her own abilities as a rancher caused her to almost abandon the project. However, the sight of her mother's clothes caused her to rethink her plans and awakened memories of a childhood spent on the range. Her family's multiple Jackson Hole ranches were "literally the stuff of postcards and paintings.” Mead-Ferro realized that this beauty and order, along with everything she experienced on that ranch, were the fruit of three generations' worth of commitment and sacrifice. In tribute to her forebears, she chronicles their lives, starting with her great-grandfather. While he accumulated the land and cattle, his son solidified the family's reputation by becoming governor and later, a Wyoming state senator. His daughter, Mary, and her husband then became stewards of the land. The author provides some vivid details about the mechanics of ranch life, but her awkward, strained attempts at folksiness, marginally interesting character portraits and general lack of insight make for unsatisfying reading.
A mostly dull rendering of the author’s attempt to “live up to [her] birthright.”Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7627-8064-8
Page Count: 200
Publisher: TwoDot/Globe Pequot
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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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...
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
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