Author: Donald R. Dempsey
Author Website: http://bettyschild.com
Genre: Personal Memoir
ISBN: 9780988439016
Formats: Trade paperback and e-book
Reviewer's Link: http://tinyurl.com/qy5uho9
Reviewed by Kirkus Indie
A highly visual debut memoir from Don Dempsey spanning his pre- to early
adolescent years in urban Ohio
Dempsey illuminates the steep uphill scramble he had as a young man in a
bad neighborhood. The memoir opens cinematically on a night of petty stealing,
which escalated to the sort of theft that exposed young Donny to violent
retribution. Donny attempted to guard himself, his younger brothers and his
canine companion, Benji, from the string of hothead men his mother—the eponymous
Betty—welcomed into the family’s rotating rental houses. In addition to fending
off soul savers from the church Betty attended in order to run her scams, Donny
turned down invitations to participate in crime more difficult than theft. Most
of the book’s sequences—a teacher’s good-hearted but ultimately futile efforts
to defend Donny from a bully—efficiently reveal the wit and determination, not
to mention anger, that helped Donny survive.
Neither alarmist nor self-pitying, the memoir sees Donny through mounting
losses of his sense of safety, his friends, his sanity-saving dog and his
proximity to his brothers. While this account certainly couldn’t be called
feel-good, it also isn’t altogether bleak. Early in the book, Donny poses a
question to himself: “Would I wind up toothless, clueless and broke because of
heredity—or because of where and how we lived?” Determined not to consider
either factor an excuse, as a preteen boy he decided that, despite his abuse and
neglect, he would choose better for himself.
By turns heartrending and humorous, the book’s main events are accompanied
by resonant dialogue that reveals the speakers’ natures. Distinguishing his from
similar accounts, Dempsey’s discipline as a writer lends the real-life tale the
feel of a fictional page-turner. In scene after vivid scene, Dempsey presents
his inspiring true story with accomplished style.
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