More Postcards from Paradise

Rating:
Summary: "Impossible Not To Enjoy"
Review: Solares Hill Newspaper 12/25/98 By Rosalind Brackenbury

June Keith's new book is a deceptively easy read. While you're being royally entertained by anecdotes, gossip and chat about Key West, what's really happening is that June Keith is sharing her own attitudes to life, which are extraordinarily kind, tolerant and intelligently liberal. More Postcards From Paradise is much more about the people who have lived and died here since the early seventies than it is about the tourist tattiness for which Key West has recently become known. If Paradise is a place that contains all of life, not some idealized destination, then Paradise is Key West. And June Keith is the perfect guide to it, because she committed herself to the place instead of just passing through; she lived and worked here as a waitress and a go-go dancer before she became a published writer, married a Conch and raised a son and made many friends. She came here in 1974 and like several other women I know (and like Goldie Hawn's character in Criss-Cross) found that topless dancing -may not be the most wonderful job in the world, but it sure beats hitting the road back to the mainland.' She has since put down her roots here, '-as one who doesn't leave.' She's also one who does not abandon people when they get sick, who puts in her word against prejudice of all sorts. The evidence of faithful friendships with old, young, black, white, gay, straight, living, dying people runs through these pages and was for me the most striking aspect of the book. It isn't written as a memoir or autobiography, but when you've read it you truly know this warm-hearted, principled and funny woman who has been entertaining you for 255 pages with her unpretentious snippets of Key West life. The wit and toughness, as well as the optimism of this book, show Keith as a survivor; but the lightness of tone doesn't quite conceal the fact that the road less traveled has at times been a hard one. Buy this book for friends, family and out-of-town visitors. It's impossible not to enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful writer on the human condition
Review: The book consists of many vignettes on real people who live, or have lived in Key West.

Each story touched my heart, made me laugh and sometimes cry.

June Keith is a powerful writer on the human condition. Simple, truthful, and to the point. Each story makes you think and reflect.

I also read Postcards From Paradise, in anticipation of my trip to Key West. The book, made me feel comfortable in a place I've never been before.

June Keith feels like an old friend, even though We've never met.

I half expected to meet her, and the many people she wrote about so eloquently in these two fine books. The photographs really made the stories come alive for me.