108 BOOKLIFE, JANUARY 27, 2020
MEMOIR
A Last Survivor of the
Orphan Trains
William Walters and
Victoria Golden | Orphan
528 pages, e-book, $9.99, ISBN 978-0-
9997685-2-5
The late Walters, aided by writer
and editor Golden, takes readers on
a remarkable journey spanning 90
years, beginning in 1930 when he
was four years old and boarded one
of America’s final orphan trains.
Between 1854 and the 1930s, these
trains transported 250,000 poor or orphaned urban children to
rural areas for fostering. Without oversight, many of these chil-
dren, Walters included, were separated from their siblings and
suffered horrific abuse. After multiple attempts to run away,
he escaped New Mexico for good at age 12, rode the rails, and
survived on his wits before joining the Marines at 16 and
fighting in WWII. His wife, Lucretia, became his lodestar for 65
years, but childhood demons damaged his personal and
professional relationships. When he died in 2017, he was
estranged from two of his three children.
Walters’s story is one of survival. His Marine unit suffered
devastating losses in the Pacific. His formative years damaged
him so badly that Lucretia agreed to marry him only if he let go of
the massive chip on his shoulder. Walters rarely acknowledges
how difficult a man he was, something left for Golden to discuss
in the almost therapeutic analyses she provides between chap-
ters of Walters’s first-person
narration. The combination of
his reminiscence and her
supplementation—which
includes interviews with his
children—creates a rich
account of hard-knock life in
the Great Depression and
WWII.
Unfortunately, in the years
after Walters’s marriage, his
story becomes a recitation of
facts. Readers will lose
interest in the accounting of
all of his jobs over 60 years
while wishing to better under-
stand why the Walters’ sons
estranged themselves from
their parents. This memoir
shares its narrator’s aversion
to self-examination, but it’s
still a valuable close-up por-
trait of forgotten and over-
looked elements of 20th-
century American life.MEMOIR
Elephants in My Room
Christie Nicholls | Christie Nicholls
296 pages, e-book, $9.99, ASIN B07ZXKN67B
Comedian Nicholls’s efferves-
cent debut memoir recounts family
shenanigans, adventures abroad,
and other entertaining and embar-
rassing experiences with a mix of
humor and humility. The book is
split into four sections, each one
providing a theme for the stories (or
“elephants”) it contains. The first
section, “A Broad Abroad,” recalls
traveling with Nicholls’s mismatched family. The standout
tale “I Love English” begins with Nicholls joking about her
father’s family crest being “a light-bulb, a middle finger, and
an Entenmann’s Danish” as a way of introducing a story about
a booze-fueled wedding in England. The “Boys to Man”
section recalls her dips into the dating pool, including “Mother
Nose Best,” set in Wisconsin, in which Nicholls is determined
to prove her mother wrong about her foul-smelling, poorly
proportioned boyfriend, Norm.
In every story, Nicholls exhibits a gift for description; as she
describes screaming a nonstop litany of curses while incompe-
tently driving a stick-shift rental car through Iceland (“I accel-
erated and the car cried out ‘help me’ ”), readers will both
cackle hysterically and want to tighten their seat belts. Her
stories of childhood exude a clear love of family while never
sacrificing the absurdity of growing up. If readers are looking
for a combination of laughing and crying, the “Dearly
Departed” section, filled with heartwarming stories of
Nicholls’s grandparents, is sure to deliver. Family photos
are given hilarious captions to
underline that these stories
are as true as they are
absurd.
There’s no overall arc to the
collection, but each anecdote
stands well alone. Readers
will admire the fluidity with
which Nicholls describes her
intensely relatable way of
stumbling cheerfully through
life. Nicholls’s zeal for story-
telling about the everyday
proves that any event can form
the kernel of a good memoir.
She sticks the landing by
simply bearing and sharing it
all.This remarkable
story of resilience
and self-reliance is
perfect for those
who enjoy reading
about the “greatest
generation.”Production grades
Cover: B
Design & typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-Production grades
Cover: B+
Design & typography: B+
Illustrations: B
Editing: A
Marketing copy: B+This laugh-out-
loud collection of
anecdotes will
delight any fan of
funny and heartfelt
memoirs.Great for fans of
Caitlin Moran’s How to
Be a Woman, Justin
Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad
Says.Great for fans of
Stephen O’Connor’s
Orphan Trains, Tara
Westover’s Educated,
Tom Brokaw’s The
Greatest Generation.PAID REVIEWS