Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir

Cyra McFadden has done what a lot of us would like to be able to do: she's told her family history and personal memoir in totally captivating language. I read it straight through. I believe that every person's life is unique and filled with wonder, sorrow, regret and rejoicing. Cyra's writing brings her personal experiences, as a child and as a reflective adult, into such vivid language you feel you're a living witness to her situations and experience. She has reflective passages, a compelling storyline, and a great of tongue-in-cheek humor. Her memoir is not only a presentation of her unique life, it's also a graphic record of the historic passage of the rodeo days in the US West.

I stumbled across this title after reading McFadden's satirical short novel, "The Serial," which I loved.This memoir inhabits a profoundly different universe.In addition to the thoughtful reviews of this book already here, I can only add that I get goosebumps when I think back on it. Not a single false note.

Enjoyable read.always interested in relationships between daughters and fathers.

This is the enhanced story of one of my relatives. It is pretty factual. Tells the story of Cyra's famous father, Cy Taillion.

The author was a schoolmate of mine from Montana. I sent the book to another classmate knowing she would enjoy it as much as I did. She loved it! Pat

This is a memoir about a famous father (famous, at least, to the rodeo crowd of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies) and his two marriages, to two very different women. It is told by the daughter of his first marriage, who ended up being caught in the maelstrom of her parents' domestic clashes but somehow avoided being drowned.The famous father is Cy Taillon (1908-1980), who for three decades was the king of rodeo announcers - from the Bucking Horse Sale in Miles City, Montana, to the Grand National Western Livestock Exposition at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, to the Rodeo de Santa Fe here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cy had a commanding baritone voice and a suave delivery. One woman commented on his voice as follows: "I don't know what God looks like, but I know what He sounds like." Cy played to both the crowd and the performers, with lines such as: "Ladies and gentlemen, this cowboy's only pay this afternoon is your applause." His fame was such that, as his daughter discovered, "it's still difficult to pay for a drink, in a Western bar, if your last name is or once was Taillon."At his peak, Cy was a paragon of conservative and courtly Western masculinity. But as a young man he was a rip-roaring, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing hell-raiser. And he met his female counterpart in Nedra Ann Montgomery, a self-styled soubrette from Paragould, Arkansas, who changed her name to Patricia because "Pat Montgomery" would look better on a marquee. Cy and Pat got married in Great Falls, Montana after knowing each other for 24 hours. For a few years they lived on the road, in countless motels and out of their Packard, endlessly carousing, both together and independently. One summer, however, Cy "parked Pat on the farm in North Dakota * * *, the better to cut his own wide swath on the circuit." While he was gone, Pat "seduced every able-bodied man for miles" and then, when Cy returned, she defended herself to him by saying, "The only thing you told me not to do was smoke in the barn."Into this marriage of sorts was born Cyra Taillon, our author. As a young girl, she adored her glamorous father, but his marriage with Pat was doomed to end in divorce, murder, or mutual spontaneous combustion. It turned out to be the first of those alternatives. Pat ended up with Roy, who previously had been Cy's quiet and responsible right-hand man. A few years later, Cy married Dorothy, who domesticated Cy and transformed him into the model of Western virtue for which he became famous. But Dorothy had no room for a daughter by his first wife, so Cyra was relegated to Pat and her stepfather Roy, who set up house without the fireworks but instead with frigid lovelessness. Cyra writes that she once considered their marriage "inscrutable", but "I am now older and I do not think of marriages as scrutable."That's one of many keenly barbed lines in this book. (The title comes from the song, which, along with "Stormy Weather", Pat habitually sang around the house. "She was fond of songs about love under assorted climatic conditions.") More than being a profile of her famous father (and not-so-famous but equally memorable mother), RAIN OR SHINE is a memoir of a highly dysfunctional growing up - told with spunk, wit, and wisdom, without ever stooping to melodrama or donning the garb of victimhood.There is nothing tony or elegant about RAIN OR SHINE. It is now nearly 25 years old, and I would wager a small sum that it has never been carried by a bookstore in Harvard Square. But it speaks the truth and deserves a continuing audience. Hence, while I have the first Vintage paperback printing, I commend University of Nebraska Press for re-publishing the book and keeping it in print. If you are a fan of rodeo, the American West, or clear-headed and well-written memoirs, you probably would appreciate RAIN OR SHINE.

My favorite memoir. I read it years and years ago and I still recommend it to everyone. Written with biting wit and deep compassion and understanding.

After reading her wickedly satiric THE SERIAL, I decided to spend some time with some other authors before diving into this. This one's the Pulitzer nominee, so I assumed something even more hilarious. Instead, I got reality. Still wickedly witty, but factual rather than satiric.(Same thing? Maybe. Don't make me think too hard or I'll never finish this review.)It's a very different animal, showing us that McFadden has quite a range. She lived a very interesting life with a very interesting family, and here it is. She's observant, insightful, clever, and well worth reading.I've read many memoirs and enjoyed them while I read them, then forgot them a week or a month later. Heck, I can't remember most of my own memoir these days. But this is a memoir I will remember. It's a great book. That's all I have to say. If you want to know why, read some other review. I know they're out there. I'm just agreeing with them, okay? It's what I do.