A rich and rewarding narrative about the possibilities—and the challenges—of redemption.
The emotional tale of a “Super Bowl hero” who ended up homeless in his hometown of New Orleans.
The story of how Jackie Wallace was lost and found—and lost and found again—is about many things, none of them simple: racism, professional sports, New Orleans, addiction, and the gaping holes in the societal safety net that even someone who was once deemed so successful can fall through. It’s also about the transformational power of journalism; Jackson, a freelance photojournalist who worked for three decades for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, was profoundly changed by his work with Wallace. As Jackson’s newspaper article went viral, it moved and inspired countless readers to examine their own lives—and to remain connected and get clean or stay clean. Though Wallace was by no means a household name in the NFL, he was on the roster of three teams that made the Super Bowl, and he played in two of them. His light was brighter in his native New Orleans, where he was the star quarterback on the first team from a black high school to compete against white players. At the University of Arizona, where he enrolled in 1970, his coach “didn’t need another quarterback, especially a black one,” so Wallace switched to cornerback and eventually became a first-team All-American—and then a second-round draft pick in the NFL. The author found him while shooting a series on homelessness; Wallace suggested, “You ought to do a story about me.” The rest of the story is consistently complex and absorbing, as Jackson chronicles how Wallace cycled through rehab and relapse and a series of failed jobs and relationships. The author continued to stay in touch, more or less, before writing the follow-up story about losing Wallace, finding him again, and then losing him again. There are few easy answers here, but there are glimmers of hope.
A rich and rewarding narrative about the possibilities—and the challenges—of redemption.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293567-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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.
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
SEEN & HEARD
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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