Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming
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Hardcover: 256 pages
February 1, 2010 NewSouth Books ISBN-10: 1588382508 6.2 x 8 inches Buy now through:
Longtime syndicated columnist and author Johnson fashions a series of subtly toned, mildly humorous essays that move chronologically through her upbringing as a Southern Baptist and career as a dogged reporter, the notable story of this devoted journalist. - Publishers Weekly
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Nationally syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, winner of the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest reporting, turns her sharp eye on herself in this frank, exhilarating, wise, poignant, and brave memoir.
Her territory ranges from childhood memories of pre-interstate trips in the family station wagon to visit foot-washing Baptist relatives to young-girl fixations on the Barbie dolls of the title, from the simultaneous exuberance and proto-feminist doubts of young marriage to the aches of loves lost through divorce and death.
Her memorable journalism career, which began on her college newspaper and rural weeklies and moved on to prestigious big-city dailies, was marked by a distinctive writing voice and an unerring knack for revealing her much-loved South through uncommon stories about its common people. This is a big-hearted book that will leave no reader unaffected.
Her territory ranges from childhood memories of pre-interstate trips in the family station wagon to visit foot-washing Baptist relatives to young-girl fixations on the Barbie dolls of the title, from the simultaneous exuberance and proto-feminist doubts of young marriage to the aches of loves lost through divorce and death.
Her memorable journalism career, which began on her college newspaper and rural weeklies and moved on to prestigious big-city dailies, was marked by a distinctive writing voice and an unerring knack for revealing her much-loved South through uncommon stories about its common people. This is a big-hearted book that will leave no reader unaffected.
If you are burned out on memoirs, read Enchanted Evening Barbie anyway. Sentence by sentence you won’t find a better written memoir in the recent past. – Lewis Nordan
Rheta Grimsley Johnson, like Hemingway at his best, tells you no more and no less than you need or want to know. – Greg Guirard
Rheta Grimsley Johnson, like Hemingway at his best, tells you no more and no less than you need or want to know. – Greg Guirard