Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Fairy Godmother
Winter 2002
VOL.58, NO.2
thought that Jamie had ruined my writing
career. In fact, he gave me my first book. That’s the paradox.”
Jamie stayed for six years while Recknagel cared for him like a son. She
made arrangements to cure his severe sleep apnea, and she hired lawyers to
free Jamie from his parents. Over a long difficult time, Jamie managed to
peel away the layers of damage that had been inflicted upon him, and he
grew into a young man who learned to value himself and others. Now in
college, Jamie is working and living on his own. The story of this amazing
transformation became the focus of Recknagel’s first book, If Nights Could
Talk, published in September 2001 by St. Martin’s Press.
“And here I thought that Jamie had ruined my writing career,” says
Recknagel. “In fact, he gave me my first book. That’s the paradox.”
The memoir, with its elegant prose and sophisticated structure, has been
receiving rave reviews. The Washington Post wrote that “Recknagel is to be
admired not just for the quality of her prose but for her relentless selfscrutiny.”
Her book was excerpted in the September issues of Vogue, listed
as recommended reading in Elle magazine, praised in Oprah magazine, and
cited in Publisher’s Weekly as off to a strong start. Recknagel has given
readings in New York; Washington, D.C.; Williamstown, Massachusetts;
Memphis; Nashville; Houston; Dallas; Galveston; New Orleans; and other
cities.
In writing her book, Marsha had to venture into her past to make sense of
Jamie’s situation. She recounts how her wildcatter father made millions,
left the family a trust fund, and then died a mysterious death; she talks
about her alcoholic sister who had adopted Jamie but then lost him in a
nasty custody suit; she writes about her niece who drank herself to an early
death; and she tells about her weak-minded brother who never lived up to
his father’s expectations.
This Southern gothic family story had been locked up in Recknagel for
years and was seeking to be put on paper. “My former analyst,” Recknagel
explains, “told me that I had been trying to tell this story since I was nine.”
Recknagel, in fact, aspired to be a writer since she was in the third grade.
Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, she one day announced to her parents
that she was going to write a novel about her family.
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