The Face of a Naked Lady: An Omaha Family Mystery
- ISBN-10
- 0547975066
- ISBN-13
- 9780547975061
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 208
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006-06-12
- Publisher
- HMH
- Author
- Michael Rips
Description
A son uncovers the remarkable secret life of his midwestern father—and his Nebraska city—in this “beguiling [and] deeply unusual” memoir (The Boston Sunday Globe). Nick Rips’s son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility. Upon his father’s death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden portfolio of paintings—all done by his father, all of a naked black woman. His solid Republican father, Michael would eventually discover, had an interesting past and another side to his personality. Raised in one of Omaha’s most famous brothels, Nick had insisted on hiring a collection of social misfits to work in his eyeglass factory—and had once showed up in his son’s high school principal’s office in pajamas. As Michael searches for the woman in the paintings, he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless man with five million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a flying trapeze artist on her last sublime ride. Ultimately, in his investigations through his Nebraska hometown, he will discover the mysterious woman—as well as a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous permeates the everyday. “Writing with similar pain and urgency as Nick Flynn in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and August Kleinzahler in Cutty, One Rock, Rips’ terse, flinty syntax perfectly embodies the hard-boiled nature of this nearly surreal true-life tale.” —Booklist “An amazing, beautiful book—a study of a certain family in a certain place at a certain time that gives us, in stunning shorthand, the reality of America.” —Joan Didion, author of The White Album “At once a lyrical family portrait, a philosophical inquiry, a bittersweet evocation of a lost time and place, and an enthralling domestic mystery.” —Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief “Quirky, funny, moving, and immensely readable . . . a brilliantly observed story about place, family, and race in America.” —Randall Kennedy
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2005
- 192 pages
- Paperback
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Similar books
-
The Golden Flea: A Story of Obsession and Collecting
By Michael RipsIn The Golden Flea, the acclaimed writer Michael Rips takes readers on a trip through this charmed world.
-
Tattoo of a Naked Lady
By B. D. Kwiatek, Randy EverhardTattoo of a Naked Lady
-
How Do You Grab a Naked Lady?: A Memoir
By Sharon L. HicksHow Do You Grab a Naked Lady? is a sexy, horrific, funny, honest-to-the-bone memoir, with many interesting twists and turns. Sharon was torn between two opposing forces, her mother and dad.
-
The Naked Lady
By Charles Richardson, Amira KiddThis story is a continuation of Allure of a Predator.
-
Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies: Women and the American Space Community during the Cold War, 1960s-1980s
By Karin HilckWomen, like the astronauts' wives, had always been used in pictures to witness the great deeds of space men explorers; now women were also used as the faces of the Challenger accident. While McAullife's portrait was often featured as ...
-
Naked Lady
By Mullin GarrAuthor Mullin Garr, who as it turns out also made the leap from Greenleaf to Olympia US, debuted for Maurice with this book, an explicit yet tender account of a Hollywood writer and the babe he seduces.
-
Hey, Naked Lady ; a New Comedy in Two Acts
By Fred CarmichaelHey, Naked Lady ; a New Comedy in Two Acts
-
Roofing with a Naked Lady and Other Stories
By Fred AndersonI got up on top of the roof and started to pull the planks, one by one, from the rafters. When I removed the nails, each plank snapped out of place. I was careful not to get hit in the face as I ...
-
The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
By Susan Wittig Albert“I've come to ask you for a little more time, Mr. Johnson,” she said. “The holidays will soon be here and—” Mr. Johnson cast his glance heavenward. “Time? ... A modest rent, I'm afraid, because that's all she can afford.
-
Naked Lady Soup
By Heather Jo FloresWritten by Heather Jo Flores, the author of Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, Naked Lady Soup is equal parts memoir, manifesto, and magical realism, with a healthy dose of tragic ...