Review: "A" for effort
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 6, 2012
I'm very glad I read the book and I'm giving it four stars because I cannot rate it at three-and-a-half. Flossie and her family lived a very difficult life, some of which was of their own making.  Her story is quite compelling and it was was an eye-opening read for me. I had no idea such performers existed so long into the twentieth century*.  I had certainly never heard of the Turner Family previously and for that reason alone, I'm glad I happened upon her story. She seems to write about even her own character flaws with honesty, for which she is to be commended.But I don't want to critique their lives, only Flossie's writing; she had a co-author so I would have expected a little higher caliber in that department.And the writing is why I drop it from the four stars I would like to rate it. The writing was at times a bit confusing, such as the events and time line around her mother's death. I thought she died at the young age of forty-three, but then Flossie states she was in her sixties. And sometimes the tense would change in mid-paragraph, so I had to re-read a passage to see if I had mis-read it the first time. I guess better editing would have helped.And then Flossie's attitude at times confused me. She knew what each member of her family was like, how they used everybody they could, but she continually put herself in situations where they would use her, and then she complained about being used by those very people. Her heart seems to have been in the right place, but I found the "why me" tone of the book annoying.All-in-all, it's worth reading, even just to educate oneself about an interesting time in history. You should read it.(*edited 11/10/12; changed "twenty-first century" to "twentieth century," which is when they actually performed)