An enchanting epistolary account of a wartime love story.
Hannon’s biography draws on her parents’ correspondence during the Second World War.
This debut has an origin story that’s worthy of a Hollywood movie. When Hannon and her sisters were clearing out the family home after their mother’s death, they found two boxes in Dorothy’s bedroom closet. One was a collection of World War II memorabilia, including documents, news clippings, and photos, and the other was a cache of letters between Dorothy and their late father, George. The two were teenagers together in 1930s Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and they’d only been wed for a brief period in 1943 when George shipped out to England to serve in the U.S. Air Force. “Although neither of them knew at the time,” Hannon writes, “they would not see each other for almost two years, not until the war ended.” In the following pages, she presents their correspondence, including reproductions of Western Union telegrams, letters with marvelous prewar cursive handwriting, and plenty of family photos, mostly in color. Hannon extensively contextualizes the letters, relating everything from day-to-day details of Dorothy’s and George’s lives in the ’30s and the war years to the tense drama of George parachuting out of a burning plane in January 1944 and spending more than a year as a prisoner of war in Germany. The extensive detail creates a compelling picture of the lived experience of the World War II era. Dorothy’s letters to George are particularly winning, as in one dated May 1, 1944, when she was thinking of enjoying spring days with him upon his return: “You know we never had a chance to enjoy spring together, much less fall and winter….Let’s go on picnics and take the car out for nowhere in particular.” Hannon and her siblings should be cheered for so lovingly preserving these records.
An enchanting epistolary account of a wartime love story.Pub Date: June 5, 2024
ISBN: 9798890915795
Page Count: 292
Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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