Book of the week
Had Evelyn Ryan, the real-life heroine of this delightful, inspiring memoir of the '50s, been born 30 years later, she'd likely be pulling in six figures at a Madison Avenue ad agency. Instead, saddled with an alcoholic husband and a brood of 10, she used her self-described "knack for words" to keep her struggling family afloat. Evelyn's strategy? To furnish the house with the prizes—everything from frying pans to a Triumph TR3 sports car—she won in hundreds of jingle-writing contests for products like Lipton soup ("Seasoned right for season-round zest/ Cents and minutes are all you invest") and Lucky Strike cigarettes ("Send me laundry, send me dough/ Send me Luckies to send my beau..."). Ryan's daughter Terry, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, presents Eisenhower-era America in prose as warm as oatmeal. The author and her siblings are given their due—as is their abusive, whiskey-soused dad—but the book's sturdy center is Evelyn (who died in 1998), a woman whose can-do spirit honored her aptly named hometown. (Simon & Schuster, $24)
Bottom Line: Nabs first prize in the memoir genre
