An often affecting, if formulaic, story that’s unpretentiously told.
A recounting of a man’s spiritual journey from anger to inner peace.
Debut author George, inspired by the example of his father and three uncles, who all saw combat in World War II, attended the Citadel in 1963—a military academy in South Carolina with a reputation for brutal rites of passage. After his graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was sent to serve as an intelligence officer in Thailand in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. George witnessed not only the grim wages of armed conflict—and even accompanied some pilots on their combat missions—but also the troops’ demoralization, due to politicians’ unprincipled leadership. After his overseas tour concluded, he was stationed in Las Vegas but eventually left in 1972 to join the Los Angeles Police Academy. However, life as an LA cop made him angry and disillusioned, and the emotional distance between himself and his wife grew, leading to divorce in 1977: “How do you remove pain, suffering, avarice, and brutality yet fairly convey the experiences of a policeman to someone who has never experienced the dark side of humanity?” he writes. George later resigned from the force and found himself searching for spiritual succor. He finally discovered solace in Christianity, a religion he once thought was mired in hypocrisy. He later embarked on a corporate career, remarried, and devoted himself to deepening his faith; he ended up starting a new church and became a fire department chaplain. On the whole, the lesson that George communicates in this remembrance isn’t a groundbreaking one; there’s no shortage of autobiographies that recount a journey from repressed trauma to spiritual enlightenment. Still, his story is told with humor and charm, and it’s likely to be an especially poignant tale for readers who’ve also served in the military. Throughout, the author effectively laces his recollections with lighthearted moments and candid self-effacement. At one point, for example, he relates a story about how he pulled a man from a burning apartment, the result of an unattended pot of menudo on the stove. The odor penetrated George’s clothes so deeply that he had no choice but to throw them out, and his superiors gave him a special award: “As far as I know, I’m the only LAPD officer ever to receive the Medal of Menudo.”
An often affecting, if formulaic, story that’s unpretentiously told.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-6198-6
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 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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