Gleah Power’s powerful new memoir receives the thumbs up from ASP’s Rose Solari.
Rose Solari made waves today when her review of the much-anticipated new Gleah Powers memoir Million Dollar Red hit the front page of Lit Pub. Solari, the co-founder of Alan Squire Publishing and a working editor on almost every book we published, was more than prepared for the job of critic, penning a review that, though positive, does not pull any punches. At the end of the review, Solari gives Powers her most keen approval writing, “[Powers is] a writer who is still growing in ambition and range. I’m already looking forward to Gleah Powers’ next book.”
Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire review Here. And pick up Powers’ book from Vine Leaves Press. Solari’s newest collection of poems is The Last Girl and her debut novel is A Secret Woman.
Excerpt
As with every chapter in Million Dollar Red, “Abortos” is written to be read as a self-contained story. Aside from the obvious commercial value of this structure — the stand-alone nature of the chapters makes them ideal for promotional excerpting — it also allows Powers to pinball about in her life story. Instead of following a single linear path, the reader scrambles through Powers’ memories with her, alighting here and there for a tense and telling anecdote. What is lost in such a form is the sense of perspective that a more linear framework would allow. But the book mirrors the hectic, arbitrary twists and turns of the writer’s life.
Chief among these is a chance meeting in a Scottsdale bar with Ray, a costume designer in town to work on the Michelangelo Antonioni film, “Zabriskie Point.” Ray and Linda become a couple, and before long she is traveling with him, meeting a series of artistic and cultural luminaries who she finds alternately intimidating and inspiring. One of the latter is Kathleen Cleaver, wife of Black Panther co-founder Eldridge Cleaver, who powers meets when Antonioni is filming the group in New York. Cleaver provides the narrator with a powerful life motto: “Imagination is the most powerful weapon we have.”
As Powers makes her way from LA to New York, the pace pics up, along with her artistic aspirations.
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