An often absorbing true story of hardship and admirable perseverance.
In Hunter’s debut memoir, a man recounts a harrowing childhood.
The author was born in 1960 to Puerto Rican parents living in Brooklyn. He was the youngest of a large clan of 22 children, including those from his father’s first marriage. Hunter’s life, as he describes it in these pages, was very difficult, even early on; for example, he was still an infant when his mother first started showing clear signs of mental illness, including auditory hallucinations and violent outbursts, and he was still a child when his physically ill father died, which left the family in dire straits. Hunter’s mother’s deteriorating condition eventually necessitated her being placed in a psychiatric hospital, and he and his older brother Tommy wound up living at an orphanage. The author soon met a basketball coach for a local church and a Boy Scout leader. Hunter writes that he was enthralled by the charismatic man named Charlie, who excited him with the prospect of joining the Boy Scouts. One year later, the 11-year-old author became an official part of the troop, and when the author was 12, Charlie began sexually abusing the young boy. Not long afterward, Charlie coerced the author into “hustling” on the streets, earning money that the older man pocketed for himself. The author and his abuser lived together, although Hunter did see his mother regularly after she was released from the hospital. He writes of hoping to find a way to somehow escape from Charlie, whose abuse later included regular beatings.
Hunter unflinchingly relates his remembrance in unadorned prose that depicts his early years, although he never graphically describes any of the abuse he suffered. The book isn’t entirely linear in its chronology, since its first half alternates between the mid-1960s and the early ’70s, when he describes being trafficked for sex. Mostly, however, the memoir presents his life chronologically, revealing his increasingly dire situation and the gradual manner in which Charlie lured him into his abusive plans. The book also intermittently focuses on the author’s brother Danny, who returned from his military service in Vietnam shortly after their father’s death. Danny didn’t “lead the family,” though, as the other members of the family had hoped that he would; he suffered from PTSD, was addicted to drugs, and regularly mistreated his siblings. Charlie is clearly portrayed as a cruel person who habitually beat and intimidated the author. The book’s latter half centers on the author’s interactions with a couple of pedophilic “johns,” whom he remembers fondly for their occasional moments of apparent kindness—a dynamic that readers will surely find disturbing. Hunter rounds out his novel with a concise, effective wrap-up that details his days after freeing himself from his abusive situation, his loss of someone close to him, and where his life is now. One section includes a handful of personal photos of the author’s family and places he’s lived or once frequented, as well as one person’s mug shot.
An often absorbing true story of hardship and admirable perseverance.Pub Date: April 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798889603375
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
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