A drug trafficker recounts his life on the lam in this debut memoir.
Growing up in a small South Dakota town where boys “aspired to be Daniel Boone, not Kanye West,” Davis’ life dramatically changed when he left home in 1974 for the bright lights of Las Vegas. As a college student, he started manufacturing “White Crosses” (speed pills) and soon recruited the local Bandidos motorcycle gang to distribute his supply. His decision to enter this volatile, dangerous world ushered in a period of extreme wealth, as he earned close to $200,000 per week selling the drug. But then he was caught by authorities and incarcerated—ironically enough, for selling marijuana, a far less expensive and less lethal substance than speed. He avoided this conviction, however, by jumping bail and slipping over the border into Mexico undetected. During his many years on the run across Central and South America, he found some unusual ways to hide out: with the infamous Colombian Medellín drug cartel, in Panama’s mostly uncharted Darien Gap, and even, briefly, in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Desperate to stay one step ahead of the American authorities (federales), Davis falsified his identity and moved often from city to city to avoid arousing suspicion: “I was a fugitive with a stolen fake passport….I was trying to con a con,” he writes. This memoir is written with an intense, electrifying energy; for example, when Davis is finally caught by authorities in Venezuela, he says, “I had sworn early on that the only way I would return to America was with pennies on my eyes or in handcuffs.” Co-author Conti (Whatever Happened to Martin Barnett?, 2016, etc.) helps to hold things together in a strong retelling that addresses the many complexities of Davis’ life story. The narrative is propelled by sharp, energizing prose that firmly holds readers’ attention as they’re plunged into the dramatic, unstable Central American drug circuit. For those who are uninitiated into this elusive milieu, the book offers robust context that combines with the larger narrative and truly enriches the story of a life lived on the edge. A fast-paced, thrilling work about navigating the dangerous drug trade.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-938812-84-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Full Court Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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