Acclaimed 60 Minutes commentator and true-crime author Shana Alexander turns her journalist's eye to her own unconventional family-and herself-in this fascinating, moving memoir Shana Alexander spent most of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents. Milton Ager was a famous songwriter whose creations included "Ain't She Sweet" and "Happy Days Are Here Again." Cecelia Ager was a film critic and Variety columnist. They were a glamorous Jazz Age couple that moved in charmed circles with George and Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, and Jerome Kern. They remained together for fifty-seven years, and yet they lived separate lives. This wise, witty, unflinchingly candid memoir is also a revealing account of Alexander's own life, from her successful career as a writer and national-news commentator to her troubled marriages and emotionally wrenching love affairs. She shares insights about growing up with a cold, hypercritical mother, her relationship with her younger sister, the suicide of her adopted daughter, and her reconciliation with her parents after a twenty-year estrangement. "I had to do a lot of detective work to uncover the truth about my parents' lives," Alexander said. "I knew almost nothing about them as people. But by the end they really did become my best friends."
"Offers charmed glimpses of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway. Alexander describes her mother as cold and unattached and writes of her inability to express love to either her daughters or her husband. The book's title, Happy Days, taken from one of her father's most famous songs, 'Happy Days Are Here Again' is ironic 'because my childhood was anything but,' Alexander said."
Publishers Weekly
"Happy Days is an open theatrical trunk with a brilliant assortment of zany characters and gems of anecdotes spilling out."
Publishers Weekly
"I read this book too quickly because I enjoyed it too much. If I have two regrets, they are that the book wasn't long enough and that I didn't write it."
