Crazy for Trying

by Joni Rodgers

Seeking to escape the shadow of her infamous mother—a radical lesbian poet who is larger than life, even in death—Tulsa Bitters, zaftig, bookish and freshly orphaned, takes a westbound train, determined to reinvent herself. She gets a job as a late-night disc jockey at a radio station in Helena, Montana. It’s 1979, and people aren’t accustomed to hearing a woman’s voice on the radio, but for Tulsa, far away from all the people who loved and hurt her, midnight rock’n’roll feels like home. Painfully aware that she’ll never be beautiful, she discovers that being invisible is even better.

Michael White Wolf MacPeters, half Blackfoot, half raging Irish, hears her voice on the radio and finds himself on the phone with her one night. The conversation evolves, smart, funny, and full of compassion, and Mac begins a careful courtship, her voice in his ear, his voice in hers. Despite the baggage of his damaged past—from the suicide of his half-breed mother to his own bloody passage in Vietnam—Mac allows himself to believe it could work, but the unlikely romance is cause for horror among Tulsa’s friends and Mac’s drinking buddies.

Genres: Romance, Fiction

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

NYT bestselling author Joni Rodgers was born into a family of gospel/bluegrass musicians and grew up on stage, opening for huge-haired country music legends of the 60s and 70s. She continued performing until 1994, when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and used the chemo downtime to complete her first two novels, both of which were published to critical acclaim. Joni's memoir, Bald in the Land of Big Hair (Harper Collins 2001), garnered glowing reviews around the world, was excerpted in Good Housekeeping, condensed by Reader’s Digest, and is still in print after ten years. It also launched Joni's public speaking career and brought her to the attention of celebrities and others who began asking her to help them tell their stories. She's known on both coasts as a ghostwriter, book doctor and memoir guru who applies the fine art of fiction to the creation of well-crafted narrative nonfiction.

Between novels and ghostwriting projects, Joni volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and blogs about books and publishing on "Boxing the Octopus". Married to jet plane mechanic/wine maker Gary Rodgers since 1983, Joni is the proud mother of two fine young adults. She lives in Houston, Texas. Her latest book debuted at #6 on the NYT bestseller list.

“A mix of Moly Ivins' blowsy wit and Anna Quindlen's suburban logic...Rodgers manages the rare literary feat of being funny and painful in one urgent breath.”
~ Entertainment Weekly

Reviews

[Susie Dahlk · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like country western music, you'll like this energetic little novel by Joni Rodgers. Set in Montana, the characters leap from the page into your heart! Everyone wins!

[Suanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy for Trying is a bit of a genre-bending novel: coming of age meets women’s fiction meets feminism meets western romance. I enjoyed it very much.

Tulsa Bitters leaves San Francisco after the death of Andrea Firestein, Tulsa’s 1970s lesbian feminist activist mother’s death and the demise of Tulsa’s relationship with an artist. She moves to Montana, an abrupt change from the liberality of California, Paris, New York, and other ritzy places she’s lived. An avid bookworm and a bit of a loner, she’s seemingly a poor fit in the small Montana town. She finds a job at the local radio station and, as the first female, faces hard core misogyny there. She lives a meager existence on this minimum-wage job. A nighttime caller into her radio program sparks a return to life.

Crazy for Trying has considerably more depth than the average romance, which I found particularly enchanting. The role of music cannot be understated, and the prose is scattered with lines from old-time country music (Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, etc.) and many folk and rock and rolls music references (Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, etc). The romance is definitely secondary to the coming of age story but with the twist of a May-December type romance

[Tonya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked her other books better. However the subject matter and how Native Americans were treated at that time period was important. I know this was a book she wrote early on so i think that could have been part of why I didn’t like it as well as some of her others. Very readable.

[Toni · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first, the story was holding my interest, it was well written and seemed to be about a young woman's struggle to find an identity after the death of her mother. But at some point it just took a weird turn and scattered off into several different directions. I had to make myself finish it, from about the halfway mark, because I felt that having gotten that far, I should find out what happened.

It just felt like the author wanted to cover too many different topics in one book. Sometimes I felt like I just had no idea what was happening because it jumped around so much. Overall, it wasn't a bad read, but it could have been a more cohesive and smoother story if it had concentrated on attempting to make one solid point rather than making several.

[Kate Millin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tulsa is the daughter of a famous lesbian activist in the 1950's a time of great discrimination. When her beloved mother dies leaving everything to Her partner Jeanne Tulsa feels she needs to take time to work out what she wants in life. So she takes a train to the mid west and starts to build a new life for herself. She has to fight discrimination as the first female radio presenter on the local radio stations and makes a new raft of friends from local people who welcome her into their lives.
It took me a bit of time to get into, but at the end I struggled to put the book down

[Kandi]

not my kind of book.