Have you read "You'll be Okay" and feel strongly enough about it to contribute a review? We'd like to hear from you. The reviews from the mainstream press have been very positive. We here at the site are interested in what you think. If you care to share your thoughts, send an email to rhughesATediekerouacparker.com (replacing the AT with @) and we will post them. Knowing Edie as I did, it would have meant the world to her to hear your thoughts.
Review: You'll Be Okay
My Life With Jack Kerouac. By Edie Kerouac Parker
By Jo Adamczyk January 2008
Oh, how I wish I had known Frankie Edith Kerouac Parker during her lifetime. In reading her memoir of her life during the upheaval and uncertainty if the 2nd World War and her undying devotion to her first true love; she pulls you back to a chapter of our history that fascinates our imaginations and rekindles the rebel in all of us.
Edie came to her independence naturally, with a playboy father that made the "more carefree, fun-loving roaring twenties side of life," very appealing and more available than the "cloistered existence" of her mother's home in Detroit. It was a natural course of events that led her to plead her case to go to New York City after High School and live with her Grandmother, to see what life had to offer her.
"Gram" introduced her to a young man, of good back-ground, named Henri Cru who in turn introduced Edie to a high school buddy who was attending Columbia on a football scholarship but, "was a real genius, too" and her life was forever altered and enlightened by the love of her life, Jack Kerouac.
Edie gives us a beautiful vista into the heart and soul of their first loves, before life, success and the" beat generation" take their toll. Frankie's recall of the events carry you through what they ate, the clothes they wore, and what they talked about during a time in our history where people tried to live and love along side the politics of WW II until a tragedy changes the course of their lives forever. In her writing you feel Frankie's love for Jack and all of her friends and the humor that got her through the most heart-felt times in her life . She brings her memories up to 25 years later when she finally has to realize what "You'll be Okay", really means. Thankfully Frankie met a young man- another young writer, Tim Moran, who brings us through the years after Jack's death; told to him as only Edie could.
A good read that helps us understand the early stages of an era in our history that is often misunderstood.