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A ROSE FOR MY MOTHER

An inspirational, unsentimental tale of overcoming the odds.

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An account of one woman’s turbulent childhood and her paranormal awakening.

Canfield’s parents Ralph and Lorraine meet as teenagers in South Buffalo and quickly create a large family when children keep arriving despite the pair’s inability to care for them, either financially or emotionally. Even when Ralph had steady work at an arms plant during World War II, money was tight, and as work dries up after the war, the family’s situation deteriorates. Ralph and Lorraine argue and drink too much, leaving the children to largely fend for themselves. The family splits up, and Nancy Lee is sent to live with her aunt and abusive uncle for a short stint before being placed in numerous foster homes and eventually an orphanage. After a few years, the family reunites underneath one roof, but Nancy Lee is much changed, scarred by her experiences. She eventually marries the first man she meets, who is 23 to her 17, out of a clear desire to escape the highly toxic and dysfunctional family home. By 20, Nancy Lee is the mother of three children and the wife of a man who physically and verbally abuses her. Knowing that she is trapped, she repeatedly tells her husband that one day she will leave him. After 20-plus years, Nancy Lee finally keeps her promise and files for divorce, explaining that a key component in her ability to make such a bold move is the inner strength she has developed through harnessing her paranormal sensitivities; Nancy Lee is a highly sensitive person with psychic abilities, signs of which are seen throughout her childhood. The author’s tell-it-like-it-was memoir is moving because of its lack of sentimentality; she neither demonizes nor idealizes her parents and depicts the people in her life so vividly that at times it’s easy to forget that this startling tale is nonfiction. While the paranormal details, coupled with some purple prose, may make the book hard for some readers to swallow, on the whole, Canfield’s story is an incredible account of childhood neglect and her power to triumph in a life riddled with obstacles.

An inspirational, unsentimental tale of overcoming the odds.

Pub Date: June 14, 2010

ISBN: 978-1450231251

Page Count: 300

Publisher: iUniverse

Review Posted Online: March 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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INTO THE WILD

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.

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)

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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