The subtitle of this 1993 book is "a daughter's memoir of growing up in Alaska's underworld." The author, a journalist, remembers and documents her parents' lives: Johnny Rich, a charming ne'er-do-well who was into gambling and prostitution, and his wife Frances Ann "Ginger" Rich, who worked as a dancer and sometime prostitute but eventually ended her days in a mental asylum. The couple ran away from bad luck and disapproving families in New Jersey and the Midwest to Anchorage to seek their fortune in the late 1950s. In 1973, when Kim was 15 and her mother already deceased, her father was brutally murdered by shady associates. Rich recreates her parents' lives, the milieu in which her father operated, and the judicial aftermath of his violent death. It's an oddly poignant and absorbing tale.
Click here to see the rest of this review
The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
