Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming

Nationally syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson turns her sharp eye on herself in this frank, exhilerating, wise, poignant, and brave memoir. Her territory ranges from childhood memories of ritual pre-interstate trips in the family station wagon to visit foot-washing Baptist relatives to young-girl fixations on the Barbie dolls of the title, from the simultaneous exuberance and proto-feminist doubts of young marriage to the aches and loves lost through divorce and death. This is a big-hearted book that will leave no reader unaffected.