Her poignant and uplifting story touched the hearts of millions when it was first published and then made into a memorable television movie. A new introduction contains information on the latest cystic fibrosis research, and a touching postcript reveals how the Deford family came to terms with the loss of Alex.Whenever he speaks, sportswriter Frank Deford knows people will bring articles for him to sign. But what makes him happiest is when someone attends a sports-oriented lecture and brings a copy of Alex: The Life of a Child for him to sign. "Invariably, and happily, there's usually someone at each appearance who either brings that book or wants to talk about their connection to cystic fibrosis." Deford says. "It's tremendously gratifying to me. Rarely does a week go by that I don't get a letter about that book. People leave things at her grave. They really do. I have people tell me that she changed their lives. It's terribly dramatic, but they literally say that. I heard from a woman who became a pediatric nurse after reading the book. Hearing from people like that means more to me than anything."

    Her father urged her to save herself by hiding "in the mouth of the wolf"--or within the enemy itself. She managed to obtain false papers, secretly changing her identity and surviving the Holocaust as maid and nanny for a Nazi SS colonel.

    In her writings, Kahlo employs, in Tibol's words, an "unreserved, imaginative language, heart and intimacy laid bare," that reveals her taste for neologisms, colloquial turns and the crossing of linguistic boundaries. The freedom of her language is a path towards sincerity, the origin of Kahlo's pictorial universe, with its recurring motifs: the tramway accident that left the artist physically maimed at the age of 18; her anguished and demanding adolescent passion for Alejandro Gomez Arias; her complex and fascinating relationship with Diego Rivera; her illness as destiny; her political engagements; and her uncompromising quest for liberty. Here the reader will find Kahlo "swinging back and forth between sincerity and manipulation, self-complacency and self-flagellation, with her insatiable need for affection, her erotic upheavals, her touches of humor, setting no limits for herself, with a capacity for self-analysis and a deep humility." By gathering this material, until now scattered in archives and various published sources, Tibol offers us "a tacit autobiography and the placement of Frida within the intimate, confessional literature of the twentieth century in Mexico." This is a Frida Kahlo far removed from the distorted image so often found in films, plays and supposedly serious writings and studies--a beautiful book about Frida, by Frida.

    When Betty Isaacs walked out on her twelve kids, the youngest were packed off to foster-homes--divided up, Carl Isaacs recalls, ""like sticks of firewood."" He was ten then and from the time when, a few years ... More later, his mother told him he couldn't come back and live with her (""Don't let's rock the boat""), he didn't care about anything. Foster-homes, reform schools, escapes--it all led at 19 to a Maryland prison where, lo and behold, there was his half-brother Wayne Coleman, 26, a shiftless and somewhat dim character with a violent streak. Wayne's prison sidekick was a surprise: a black convict named George Dungee, Wayne's homosexual lover (to Carl, the ""nigger fuck-boy""), doing time for non-support(!). The trio escaped, picked up 15-year-old Billy isaacs (himself a reform school runaway, but trying to go straight), and headed south. Aimless travel eventually brought them to a rural road near Donalsonville, Ga., where they tried to burglarize a house trailer belonging to Jerry and Mary Alday. Various Alday family members showed up unexpectedly, but Wayne had a solution--""Let's blow 'em away."" It was a challenge and, insane as it seems, Carl couldn't back down:he was the leader, and his status with his brothers was all he had. Five male Aldays murdered; Mary Alday gang-raped and murdered. Once it started, Carl made certain the woman was his ticket to the electric chair--he wanted it, anything but being raped again himself by the black studs in the general prison population. Carl, Wayne, and George all drew death sentences but, ten years later, still languish on Death Row amid legal appeals, while at least one Alday relative regrets not having accepted an offer of a lynching. Howard (American Saturday, Zebra) tries hard to elevate this senseless tragedy into something more than a simple horror story--where-did-they-go-wrong flashbacks to Carl's and Billy's childhoods, interspersed with scenes of the hard-working, God-fearing Aldays--but everything other than the gore here seems manufactured. - Kirkus

    A biography of a young cancer patient with an artificial leg who determined to run 5300 miles across Canada in his own Marathon of Hope in order to raise money for cancer research.