Jim and I met Richard (Dick) Shelton at a Book Signing at Tohono Chul Park one Saturday morning late last year. He was there to talk about his latest book, Nobody Rich or Famous, A Family Memoir.
I had dreamed of meeting Mr. Shelton ever since reading his book, one of my favorites, Going Back to Bisbee, about returning to the town that had launched his teaching career.
Richard Shelton considers himself, first a poet, and then an author. He is a Regents’ Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. Shelton is a slight, quiet, elderly man with the twinkle of a leprechaun in his eyes. In his talk Shelton mentioned that he had always thought he was Irish, and was proud of it, but while researching this book, he found out that he is not, in fact Irish, despite his red hair. I am not so sure.
Now, on to the book. Nobody Rich or Famous is a family memoir, a search of one’s past for understanding and closure. Shelton calls them ghosts.
Shelton begins his story in the 1920’s with the meeting of Red and Hazel, Dick’s father and mother. He paints the story of Leonard Shelton (Red), an affable, hardscrabble boy; and Hazel, the middle class girl who falls hopelessly in love with him. Hazel is soon doomed to spend the rest of her days putting up with Red’s antics, for better or worse, which there was not much of the former. I note here that Jim was going to write this review, but the first 20 pages sent him into a grand funk. I, on the other had, found this book an enlightening, intimate foray into a social class and era of the depression that I have been spared; a life where living and eating were met with one day at a time.
The family, nuclear and extended, emerges out of Richard Shelton’s thoughts, ramblings, research, and the journals of three influential women in his life. These are journals, not diaries. They are mostly short facts about the happenings and duties of the day.
Dick, as he will be known, is born the second son and last of three Shelton children, his sister Betty being the oldest. Jack is the middle child, a mischievous boy with a mean streak that will haunt Dick throughout his life and cause him little sorrow in Jack’s death.
Betty, Dick’s sister, is a solace. Hazel, his mother is a mess. Charlotte, the grandmother, is an enigma and her husband is a rock. The times Dick spends at The Ranch will be the best, except when brother Jack is there.
The Shelton’s move a lot, more than a Navy family, but most of the aggregated time will be spent in Boise. An alternate title for this book might be “Going Back to Boise“, but that would be trite.
Red, despite his many faults, (mostly women and booze), does at times attempt to live up to his responsibilities and take care of his family. In the end, Dick cares for his father. It is a story of love and hate. There is, of course, redemption in the end. I will spare you the details. It is the best part of the book, displaying Shelton’s beautiful poetic style. I have no idea if the end of the story is true, seems too perfect, but more magical things have happened.
Through it all, this dysfunctional family, somehow stays together, poor, imperfect but not without merit.
I loved this book, not because it was an enjoyable tale, but because it is a portrait of a real family’s experience, written in witty, sometimes poignant prose, and a pertinent poem. It is a book worth reading and probably a movie worth making.
Nobody Rich or Famous: A Family Memoir by Richard Shelton will not leave my memory banks soon.
