You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac
*Starred Review* Kerouac's first wife, Edie Parker, played a pivotal role in his literary evolution, but her side of the story hasn't been fully known until now. A pampered and venturesome 17-year-old when she first spies handsome Jack pushing Cole Porter in a wheelchair near Columbia University, she falls madly in love. Against her family's wishes, she valiantly marries Kerouac in 1944 in order to spring him from a Bronx jail after he was arrested as an accomplice to their friend Lucien Carr's murder of the stalker David Kammerer. Fascinating in her own right, and writing with compelling lucidity and soulful sweetness, Parker vividly recalls her posh childhood, life in Queens with Kerouac and his parents, and her pride in working as a longshoreman. As she shares intimate details of her hectic wartime life, she provides a rare female perspective on the notoriously misogynistic Beat enclave. The story of how Parker's radiant memoir finally reached print 15 years after her death is yet more poignant testimony to life's mysterious ways. Seaman, Donna