The Bookmaker's Daughter: A Memory Unbound - Softcover

Abbott, Shirley

3.85

434 ratings by Goodreads

9780395629444: The Bookmaker's Daughter: A Memory Unbound

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395629446 ISBN 13: 9780395629444

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields, 1992

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A woman's memoir of her Arkansas childhood reflects southern history, sociology, and mythology as it chronicles her volatile relationship with her father, a bookie at an illegal gambling house. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

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From the Publisher:

With a New Introduction by the Author.

If All Arkansas Read the Same Book/2006 Selected by the Arkansas Center for the Book

From the Inside Flap:

This deeply felt memoir is a journey through family history, feminist insight, and southern mythology. In it a daughter reflects on the complicated and volatile love she and her father shared. Shirley Jean Abbott grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the 1940s and 50s and was the beloved daughter of Alfred Bemont Abbott, affectionately known as ?Hat.” Hat wasn’t a bookmaker in the literary sense, even though he allowed Shirley’s mother to believe as much while they were dating. Rather, his craft was gambling, and his business was horse racing. Despite the corruption, which put food on the table and rabbit coats in the closet, Abbott remembers the kind and attentive father who spent nights reading to her. He alone is responsible for opening the door to a world of language and literature for her. And she ran with it. Against her father’s wishes, after graduation she headed for New York City. In the end, the girl he had nurtured into an independent and intelligent young woman had outgrown the small town where she grew up. The Bookmaker’s Daughter was originally published by Ticknor and Fields in 1992 and was a Book of the Month Club selection.

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