Review by New York Times Review
As the title suggests, Gerard's native Florida links the assembled eight essays, but the setting is just that - a backdrop, against which Gerard exercises an admirable impulse for experimentation. "BFF" is an extremely intimate autopsy of a childhood friendship. "The Mayor of Williams Park" is an immersive profile, told in the quasi-detached first person, of G. W. Rolle, a minister who serves free weekend meals from the Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg; likewise "Sunshine State," about Ralph Heath, the founder of the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in Pinellas County, which she often visited as a child. That Gerard is drawn to obsessive idealists seems no coincidence. As we learn in the heavily researched family history "Mother-Father God" and in "Going Diamond," a personal essay that also includes "fictionalized composite accounts," her parents have been enthusiastic members of both Amway and the New Thought Movement. This is Gerard's second book. Her first, "Binary Star," a novel about a pair of lost 20-somethings falling out of love, was praised for its intensity and simple prose. For all of this new book's color and ambition, it's curiously lacking in voice, emotion and even very many ideas, as if the stripped-down language of Gerard's fiction doesn't quite translate to this hybrid genre and its different demands. At one point a source asks, "Are you a journalist?" and Gerard replies, "I'm more of a memoirist." In fact, she borrows from both disciplines without taking full possession of either.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 9, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Gerard, writing instructor and novelist (Binary Star, 2015), shares several long-form, creative, journalistic essays that feature her family, herself, and her home state, Florida. In Going Diamond, she alternates the factual history of Amway and her parents' involvement with the company in the 1990s and a fictional house-hunt by a couple who's achieved Amway's highest pin level, Diamond. In another essay, Gerard shadows and profiles G. W. Rolle, a man who escaped decades of homelessness and now tirelessly helps others do the same, while she also tells a broader history of homelessness in Florida and the policies and advocacy surrounding it. In the book's title essay, she immerses herself in a bird sanctuary to try to make sense of its, and its owner's, much-maligned public image. Gerard's memoiristic essays, compelling and confessional, are welcome breaks from the fascinating, densely researched narrative nonfiction that drives the majority of her book. Focusing on a single state, Gerard's scope is nonetheless quite large, and her sensitive, sympathetic writer's sensitivity for her subjects and interviewees is apparent.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Brave, keenly observational, and humanitarian, Gerard's (Binary Star) collection of essays illuminates the stark realities of Florida's Gulf Coast. With a mixture of investigative journalism and firsthand experience, she brings to life outspoken zealots, hopeless romantics, and escapist youth. She describes the hunger of Christian Scientists for earthly and spiritual wellness, Amway members for self-determined success, adolescents for reckless euphoria, testosterone-flooded males for dominance, and the underprivileged for nothing more than adequate housing and shelter. Gerard is a virtuoso of language, which in her hands is precise, unlabored, and quietly wrought with emotion. As evinced by the extensive bibliography and endnotes, she is also a very diligent journalist. To some, her thorough analyses of flawed legislation, business, religion, and literary journalism may feel long-winded at times, but readers interested in those topics will be fascinated. The chapters that will reach any reader are her deeply sad yet valiant personal essays on youth and death. Gerard's collection leaves an indelible impression. Fans of literary nonfiction and dark reverie will welcome it. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Writer Gerard (Binary Star) was born and raised in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area, and as a teenager experimented in all the sex, drugs, techno, and nu metal music available in the mid-to-late 1980s and 1990s. These essays offer recollections of her escapades and renderings on homelessness and bird sanctuaries. "Mother-Father God" details her parents' involvement in the Unity Church and her mother's work with local police; "Going Diamond" describes her father's career with Amway and the company's philosophy to dream big, which Gerard acted upon during a recent visit to tour million dollar homes; "The Mayor of Williams Park" tells of the author's acquaintance with a person named G.W., who serves Saturday morning breakfast to the homeless in St. Petersburg. The titular "Sunshine State" outlines her volunteer work at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary and details efforts to save injured seabirds. While geographically focused on the west-central coast of Florida, Gerard's essays are not characteristic of the often-published writings on Florida as a touristy hiding place for misfits. The author genuinely writes for herself as much as for the discovery of the reader. VERDICT Writers and regional Florida readers will value this collection.-Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Decidedly odd characters emerge in eight autobiographical essays.Combining journalism and memoir, Gerard (Binary Star, 2015, etc.), a novelist, essayist, and columnist for the online journal Hazlitt, brings a sharp eye to recollections of growing up on Florida's Gulf Coast. Notable for sharply drawn portraits, her essays depict a host of unusual, eccentric men and women. In "Mother-Father God," the author introduces the earnest spiritual leader of the Unity-Clearwater congregation, a New Thought church, where, for more than a decade, her parents were devoted members. Church activities were omnipresent in her life, leading her to wonder, as an adult, why her parents joined, why they left, and how that early connection to the church shaped her. Gerard juxtaposes her parents' biographies with a history of the New Thought movement, particularly Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, that arose in late-19th-century America. Like those early followers, the author's parents found in Unity-Clearwater "positive, reaffirming messages," especially the message that "people are not punished for their sins but punished by their sins." Gerard admits that she has been drawn to the church's teaching that individuals create potential in the world by first believing in it. Maybe this ongoing belief in potential attracted her parents to become distributors for Amway, a sketchy marketing corporation accused of being a pyramid scheme. Their involvement, no less enthusiastic than in the church, is the subject of the partly fictionalized essay "Going Diamond," featuring a portrait of Amway's co-founder Richard DeVos, whose son is the husband of the current nominee for Secretary of Education. Another essay details, somewhat repetitively, the author's high school years, marked by drugs, alcohol, sex, and, surprisingly, classical singing lessons. The title essay, although it also would have benefited from further editing, vividly portrays the bizarre director of the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, where Gerard visited as a child and returned as a volunteer to conduct research. "The Mayor of Williams Park" offers an engaging profile of an unlikely activist working to ameliorate homelessness. An intimate journey reveals a Florida few visitors would ever discover. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
