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DENIED! FAILING CORDELIA

Name: DENIED! FAILING CORDELIA
Author: Simon Cambridge
ISBN: 978-1-5144-8891-1

BOOK 2: PRIDE AND LEGAL PREJUDICE

by Simon Cambridge ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 5, 2016

This work chronicles an instructively detailed, albeit odd, journey through family court.

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In Book 2 of this autobiographical series, a man attempts to reconcile with his adoptive daughter.

In Book 1, which related a bizarre and entrenched skirmish with the juvenile court system, Cambridge (Denied! Failing Cordelia: Book One, 2014) explained his complex relationship with an adopted daughter he referred to as Cordelia. In this second installment, the author explores a number of legal battles in which his “overriding objective” was reunification with the teenage Cordelia. It is a war, the reader learns early on, that has already been lost. By the time of the volume’s publication, Cordelia was legally an adult, and the author could not see her due to a restraining order. Nevertheless, Cambridge has a great deal to say about what happened and waxes on subjects ranging from restraining orders to an imaginary speech he would like to hear read in court. Throughout these pages, the author sees himself largely as a victim of Shakespearean proportions, whether at the hands of a disinterested attorney or from flaws attributable to his own Asperger’s syndrome. Then there is Cambridge’s penchant for extended metaphors (for example, he discusses a legal procedure that “could make the Titanic seem agile in trying to avoid the iceberg that sank it”). Such attempts at engendering sympathy do not always succeed, particularly since Cordelia, regardless of her own mental health and emotional challenges, for the most part seems to not want a reconciliation. And while the author may not be the most relatable figure to pass through the legal process, his perspective is an undeniably singular one. As he asserts: “Having direct experience of both adopting a legally free child and then of fighting for her in a dependency case, I feel uniquely qualified to be able to speak directly to the joys of the former and the cruelty of the latter.” The book digs deeply into child-parent legalities, and, though the conclusion is foregone, Cambridge’s many struggles are informative. Diverse challenges, like the “two-stage process” of a Section 388 petition, are explained by someone who has lived through them. The book manages to incorporate practical issues (such as hiring an attorney versus using a public defender) into an inherently sad and strange overarching story.

This work chronicles an instructively detailed, albeit odd, journey through family court.

Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5144-8891-1

Page Count: 698

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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)