From Publishers Weekly
The turbulent life of the country music star whose popularity continues long after her death in 1963 is chronicled in this biography with compelling sympathy and an attention to detail that will appeal to fans. Cline's stuggle to develop a unique country act began in Winchester, Va., in a musical, if dysfunctional, family. According to Jones, a PW contributing editor, "a home environment charged with guilt, shame and fear" led by an abusive father had a direct bearing on the marital problems and hard drinking of Cline's adult years. At the time of her death in a car accident at age 30, Cline was a headliner at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, a multimillion-dollar recording star and an influence on a generation of country singers with classics like "Crazy" and "Walking After Midnight." This sad story follows the grueling hardships and remarkable triumphs of a legendary country musician. Discography included. Photos not seen by PW. $25,000 ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Every pop-music star who comes to an untimely end becomes a legend, it seems, and eventually inspires some respectable enough biographies, not to mention the inevitable hagiographies, for our entertainers constitute the pool of prospects from which we select our martyrs and saints. That Cline (193263), the husky-voiced country singer who had barely arrived in the first circle of popularity when she died in a plane crash, really is a modern martyr Jones quickly establishes by marshaling evidence that Cline was sexually abused by her father. Cline's sanctity established, Jones continues the story of her drive to success via extensive extracts from interviews with many of her country-music associates, such as June Carter, Tompall Glaser, Wanda Jackson, Faron Youngin short, a who's who of the generation of country music stars now in their sixties. Fans should find the book fascinating, while others may think it's a bit much. Ray Olson


From the Publisher
"A definitive chronology of Patsy Cline's short life that reads as it was lived, like the melodramatic but hopelessly 'true' lyrics typical of a Nashville ballad."--Los Angeles Times

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Thirty years after the plane crash that claimed her life and has kept her frozen in time, Patsy Cline remains one of the greatest voices of this century. Since the 1980 film of Loretta Lynn's life, Coal Miner's Daughter (in which Cline was featured as Lynn's mentor and influence), and the 1985 film about Cline's life, Sweet Dreams, Patsy Cline has become a cultural icon with a following all over the world. Once heard, her uniquely haunting voice, with its characteristic sob, is never forgotten. Her recordings continue to go platinum and her signature song, the Willie Nelson composition "Crazy," is the number-one jukebox hit of all time. Patsy Cline is an archetypal American heroine who sprang from her own conception of what it truly means to be a star - a woman whose willfulness and independence made her ahead of her time. The story of her rise to fame at a time when female singers were considered window dressing is an incredible tale of tenacity set in a series of parables and uncanny "coincidences." Margaret Jones has interviewed family, friends, and many of the Nashville stars who peopled the country music scene of the 1950s and 1960s to present the first fully drawn portrait of this remarkable artist, as well as a vivid picture of the country music setting from which she emerged, as it was transformed almost overnight from regional anomaly to a multimillion-dollar industry. Patsy chronicles the life of Patsy Cline (nee Virginia Hensley) from her impoverished origins in the Depression-era South through her long, arduous apprenticeships in one-night stands in countless bars and clubs, battling questionable promoters and recording companies and surviving a near-fatal car crash to her hard-won success as the first female crossover artist to emerge from the country field. Her name was to become synonymous with heartbreak ballads, and many of her greatest hits, which explore the murky terrain of fear, loneliness, abandonment, and betrayal, could have been torn fr

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly