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In This Issue

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Love-Hate Mail

After Sunrise The long walk over, Julie Delpy explores what comes next (i.e., the hard part)

Words of the Week

The Big Score It’s hard to believe, but the Predators’ sweetheart deal may soon get a lot sweeter

shorttakes

Suspect Behavior

Perfect Score As it goes in Donkey Kong, it goes in life

Whose God Is It? The etymology of a Mexican phrase (and a treatise on lip liner)

 

 

By This Author

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Novel Talent Nashville writer Tasha Alexander takes on Cate Blanchett—and England’s Golden Age

Go, Cat, Go Jerry Naylor remembers his rockabilly roots

His Father Was a World-Class Sinner, but His Mother Was a Saint A loving son remembers June Carter Cash

So There Are Star Wars Conventions in Your Past? All Is Not Lost. Johanna Edwards has written a chick-lit novel for recovering nerdettes

Mind Your Manners In Nashville, Mama’s age-old advice just might land you a singing gig

To Capture a Mockingbird Charles Shields has written a fair-minded biography of novelist Harper Lee—even without talking to his subject

A Star Is Born, a Star Burns Out Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock writes an honest and lyrical memoir about his Florida youth

 

 

The Author

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Lacey Galbraith

 

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Ex-wives of celebrities don’t garner good press. Vivian Cash, Johnny Cash’s first wife, sets the record straight in I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny (with Ann Sharpsteen, Scribner, 336 pp., $27), putting an end to her decades-long silence. “Not only have I gone out of my way for years to not talk about our years together,” she writes, “but the real truth about our marriage and divorce has never been told.”

Vivian Cash died in 2005 from lung cancer, but the book, published posthumously, could easily serve as a textbook for a support group called Spouses and Children of Country Music Musicians. With all celebrities, but particularly with a man like Johnny Cash, myths abound. Vivian understandably wonders whether her audience is ready for the kind of myth-busting story she has on offer here: “Could they imagine a truth other than the stories they’ve been told?” Before his death in 2003, however, Johnny encouraged his ex-wife to tell her side of the story: “Viv, I’ve been thinking for years, if anyone on this planet should write a book about me, it should be you,” the memoir says he told her. “It’s time.”

In tackling the misconceptions, Vivian Cash makes several serious incursions on the Cash legend, particularly as it was recorded in the 2005 film, Walk the Line. She and Johnny were married for 12 years (they’d met when she was 17 and he was 19); the hit “I Walk the Line” was written for her, not June Carter, and though Johnny’s addictions took a toll on their family, it was June who caused the eventual break-up. (“Vivian, he will be mine,” June once remarked, according to the memoir.) And when Johnny finally overcame his drug and alcohol problems, it wasn’t because June saved him.

Divided into two parts, the bulk of I Walked the Line is taken up by samples from the nearly 10,000 pages of love letters Johnny wrote to Vivian during their largely epistolary courtship, conducted while Johnny was in Germany with the Air Force. The letters offer powerful support for Vivian’s claim that theirs was a true love match. But her only intention here is to tell her own story. And in the end, Vivian pardons those who hurt her, especially June Carter. “I forgive her for everything she ever did,” she writes. “And I ask God to please forgive me for holding her accountable. That wasn’t my job.” Vivian says she never stopped loving Johnny Cash, but she isn’t bitter about how things turned out. Of her life’s journey, she says, “I’m grateful.”Ann Sharpsteen will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Sept. 17, 6 p.m.