I've been reading Mother Wore Tights, a book written about her parents by the daughter of one of vaudeville's floradora girls. (Betty Grable stared in the movie.) But here's the cool thing: over the years, as I've talked about Tacoma on my radio show, I always mention books where some mention of Tacoma unexpectedly pops up. In Mother Wore Tights, well-known, Tacoma actor Charlie Mack, who excelled in blackface, appears. The author was four when she met him back stage and fell in love. Every day she drew him a picture (generally of the same thing) and one day he tried to give her some money for it. Her parents wouldn't allow her to accept the money so Mack went out and bought her silver heart on a chain. How very kind when he could have just brushed her off as a pesty kid. In the books I've read, information about vaudeville generally comes at the beginning of a biography where the star started in vaudeville and made good in the movies, such as W.C. Fields or Burns and Allen. This is one of those out-of-print books that was a delight to discover.

Success at last! I've published two non-fiction books but this is my first fiction book. The publisher is Books We Love and it is coming out first as an ebook before being available in paper form from Amazon. I set the story circa 1988 to avoid cell phones and computers making the heroine's life easy. I hope A Line to Murder finds an audience.

I'm lucky enough to live near Pacific Lutheran University and, when its hot as it is now, I walk my dog there under the trees. Today the campus was crowded with young people wearing orange tee shirts. Since school is out, I ask two young men what was going on and they told me it was a barbershop quarter gathering. Not only that, they told me some of the groups were female. I think its totally cook that twenty-somethings care about barbershop music and that women are now involved. Who'a thunk?

Some wallowing in nostalgia is good. At least that is what an interviewee on NPR said yesterday. Apparently the wallowing process warms a person up during cold weather. I am nostalgic about things that society has taken away, such as fun in school at Christmas making decorations, being able to trick or treat door to door without my parents, and I guess about the golden years in Hollywood which was actually before my time. I am current reading Betty Grable's biography. I've notice a lot of mystery books being set before cell phone and computers - - some old fashioned gumshoe work required. My mystery (in pre-production) A Line to Murder takes place circa 1988. Hopefully I scooted right past leg warmers and sideways ponytails.

 Before I close the back page on My Way (which I actually already did) I have to make note of a quote on page 179. When talking about someone named Ben, Anka wrote, "He was always crazed to get laid, but we'd always blow him off." Boners (he he) such as that are why I finished the book.

Now, on to Tracy Chevalier. What an amazing writer. I don't care for Renaissance fiction but Ms. Chevalier made me care. The first book of her's I read was The Runaway. Quaker heroine Honor Bright ( I had to get past the deriative name) helps runaway slaves in mid-19th century Ohio. That book let me to  Remarkable Creatures. A woman named Elizabeth Philpot meets as girl named Mary Anning on a Lyme, England beach and becomes hooked on fossils. From there I went on to Burning Bright, the Kellaway family, newly arrived in London meets revolutionary poet William Blake. I don't know about Honor Bright but Ms. Philpot, Ms. Anning and, of course, Mr. Blake were real people and the author wove fictional narratives around true events. Really great reads.

I have also been reading late 19th century local newspapers and came across a door-to-door jewelry repair lady. How hard it was to be a single female one hundred years or more ago.

Book Review of Paul Anka's My Way

I love to read but I especially love non-fiction. That being said, autobiographers should be careful about what their writing reveals about themselves. Case in point, Paul Anka's My Way. The title, of course, comes from the song he wrote for Frank Sinatra and, though I don't remember reading much about Paul Anka being on the fringe of the Rat Pack, his book certainly hints at it and reveals a major man-crush, particularly on Sinatra. Mr. Anka also seems to have a bromance with the Mob. For fans of early rock-n-roll, the book is a lot like cheap birdseed: a few bits of good stuff among lots of mullet. There is a nice section on rock-n-roll's early days and busing with the likes of Buddy Holly and Fats Domino, and the problems with Jim Crow laws, but did I want to know he (Anka not Jim Crow) was crawling in Annette Funicello's bedroom to have an affair? I know one of the Fleetwoods but she can't remember anything about being on American Bandstand. Nor, it appears, does Mr. Anka. Most of what he has to say about Dick Clark has to do with a payolla scandal.There's some interesting early Vegas history but, again, lots of "mullet" too. Sadly, I came away disliking the book and Mr. Anka both.