>From Booklist
Although Woody Guthrie has been a favorite topic of children's books
in recent years, there has not been a substantive adult biography
written about him since Joe Klein's definitive Woody Guthrie (1980).
Cray (Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren, 1997) may well
supplant Klein, as he was given access to the Woody Guthrie Archives,
which contain previously unpublished letters, diaries, and journals.
Although his narrative is sometimes too thick with details, Cray
eloquently sums up the Okie songwriter's sorrowful life, during which
he endured his sister's and daughter's deaths by fire, his mother's
committal to an insane asylum, and his own diagnosis and death from
Huntington's disease. Cray is especially insightful on Guthrie's
politics and his deep empathy for Depression-era migrant workers. A
man of contradictions, the songwriter emerges as an intellectual who
took pains to hide his intellect and as a crusader for social justice
who neglected his own family. His second wife, Marjorie, takes on
near-heroic stature as the caregiver who, though they were long
divorced, looked after him during the last decade of his debilitating
illness. Joanne Wilkinson
-- Michael Pugliese