Johnny's Girl

Johnny’s Girl the nationally acclaimed memoir of growing up in Alaska’s underworld as the only child of gambler John F. “Johnny” Rich and exotic dancer, Frances “Ginger” Rich. It chronicles Alaska’s mean streets and her parent’s tragic lives that were cut short. 

Kim Rich was an ordinary girl trapped in an extraordinary childhood, someone who dreamed of going to parties and getting good grades while living in an after-hours hell of gamblers, pimps, and con men. She longed for normalcy, yet she was inescapably her father's child, and she had no choice but to grow up fast. Her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was a stripper and B-girl: her father was a major player in the underworld of Anchorage, Alaska in the sixties, a city flush with newfound oil money.  
Only after her father was gruesomely murdered when she was 15, and Kim became a journalist, was she able to fill in the missing pieces of one American dream gone horribly wrong. Kim's true story is a tale of a woman's search for her parent's secrets. What she finds is both shocking and tragic, but in the end she's able to discover her true self amid the remnants of her parents' lost lives.

“"This memoir poses the question, 'Which offenses from our childhood are forgivable and which ones are not?' [Rich's] book is…the story of a gutsy child's survival, the kind that should go straight to the heart." ---New York Times Book Review”

“This memoir poses the question, ‘Which offenses from our childhood are forgivable and which ones are not?’ [Rich’s] book is…the story of a gutsy child’s survival, the kind that should go straight to the heart.” 

---New York Times Book Review

“Rich does an amazing job of searching out legal and hospital records, plus letters and diaries of her dead parents, and of interviewing cops, lawyers, former B-girls, and family members,---all in a effort to lay to rest the ghosts within her…Compelling.”         ---Kirkus Review

Born in Hollywood, raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Kim Rich has an MFA degree in writing from Columbia University, and has taught at Alaska Pacific University. She now lives in the lower 48, outside of Alaska. A Normal Life is the follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Johnny's Girl: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up In Alaska's Underworld.

Gangster's Daughter Takes a Look Back... She was an ordinary girl trapped in an extraordinary childhood, someone who dreamed of going to parties and getting good grades while living in an after-hours hell of pimps and con men. Kim Rich longed for normalcy, yet she was inescapably her father's child, and she had no choice but to grow up fast. Her mother was a stripper and a B-girl; her father was a major player in the underworld of Anchorage in the sixties, a city flush with new-found oil money. Only after her father was gruesomely murdered and Kim became a journalist was she able to fill in the missing pieces of one American dream gone horribly wrong....What she finds is both shocking and tragic, but in the end she's able to discover her true self amid the remnants of her parents' lost lives.

Kim Rich's parents came to Alaska to get rich, and ended up working the gambling and B-joints of Anchorage. In probing the mysteries of their lives, Rich comes to terms with her own.

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