River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved
by Jeffrey Buckner Ford

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Book Reviews of River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved

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Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved

In 1954 Tennessee Ernie Ford broke into television on I Love Lucy as Lucy Ricardo's cousin Ernie. In 1955 "Sixteen Tons" became the fastest-selling single in the history of the recording business. From 1956 through 1961, NBC's The Ford Show brought Ernie into 30 million homes every week. Among his many honors were three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- for radio, records, and television -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

In River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved, their son Jeffrey remembers when his family's joy of being together was infectious, when the promise of every day and the thrill of being at the center of the spotlight was rapturous. It was a time when the name Ernie Ford was in the air and his fame worldwide.

In the final ten or so years before Tennessee Ernie Ford's death, the press and music industry had referred to him as "legendary." This book is, in part, an accounting of the price the Ford family paid for that title and a record of the cost it ultimately exacted from Jeffrey and his brother, who paid the greatest price. It is also the story of a simple man blessed with an extraordinary talent, whose only dream was to live an ordinary life. He walked away from Hollywood at the peak of his career in the hopes of saving his family, only to see his star shine even brighter.

This book is also a portrait of the complex and beautiful woman Ernie fell in love with and married, a brilliant artist in her own right whom the world would never known, whose star might have eclipsed even Ernie's but, instead, slowly faded with time, paling under the weight of the lengthening shadow cast by the man she loved.

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