A Strong West Wind, Gail Caldwell
A Strong West Wind, Gail Caldwell
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

A Strong West Wind
A Memoir

Author: Gail Caldwell

Narrator: Nicole Poole

Unabridged: 7 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/11/2008


Synopsis

Gail Caldwell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for The Boston Globe. Her book A Strong West Wind is a "metaphor-rich, beautifully structured reminiscence" of a child growing up in the turbulent 1960s (Booklist, starred review). Caldwell was born in Texas in 1951; in a land of plains so vast they frightened her. Caldwell's mother was a clandestine lover of books; her father was a master sergeant in World War II. These personalities shaped Caldwell; during the passionate rebellions of the 1960s, she was one of the "children who once made life hell for 'the Greatest Generation' and in the process turned out pretty great themselves" (Russell Baker, author). Turning to books for each poignant change in her life, Caldwell eventually became what her mother could not: a writer. Throughout these changes, Caldwell is driven by the restless desire she once felt as a child in a small town in Texas. "It's refreshing to read a memoir composed of real introspection and insight, a grown-up's mature perspective on a family and an era."-Washington Post Book World "Caldwell comes through as a wise and winning woman-her descriptive passages ... are wonderfully smart, moving and sympathetic-and she emerges ... a memorable narrator."-Publisher's Weekly, starred review

About Gail Caldwell

Gail Caldwell is the chief book critic for the Boston Globe, where she has been a staff writer and critic since 1985. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. She has served on many national literary juries, including several times as chair of the fiction jury for the Pulitzer Prize and the Bingham Fellowship for PEN America. She is a member of PEN International and the author of A Strong West Wind. Gail lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessaka

Amarillo by Morning George Strait can sing a song about Amarillo and make the town seem wonderful, and Gail Caldwell, who grew up there, can do the same. It made me wish that we had taken a detour off I-44 to see it when we were driving by a few years ago> Still, I knew better. It could not have look......more

Goodreads review by Brandon

I cannot say that I was fan of this memoir at all. I usually love memoirs, especially about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, but this was a complete bore. Just a warning, Caldwell makes a TON of references to classic literary works which might go over some people's heads (like mine for one......more

This memoir showed up on another book's page at Amazon, where the title and picture caught my attention, since many of my own strongest childhood memories were of windy days or nights. Not in Texas, mind you, where author Gail Caldwell grew up. Like most individuals, her childhood home, with its str......more

Goodreads review by Heather

Caldwell fans will have a no brainer and any writer wannabe will want to add this to their list. But for the rest of the readers, Caldwell writes as if she's sprawled in your living room or sharing one of your pockets on a cold day. The listen is good and the book is a treat!......more