#45-'Love Always, Patsy"-ed by Haze & Freeman
#45 is 'Love Always, Patsy: Patsy Cline's Letters to a Friend", edited by Cindy Hazen and Mike Freeman.
This is a collection of letters that Patsy wrote to a young woman named Treva, who became her personal friend, as well as the president of her fan club. They only cover a few years, because Treva died in a car accident, and Patsy died, too...and they're not complete, because some were lost in one of Treva's moves. But you can see that they did have a personal relationship, visiting each other when possible and that Patsy worked very hard at her singing career (and it was quite difficult then, even more so than now, imo, due to the more limited venues of exposure, among other factors). I wish we'd had at least a few of Treva's letters included, to show the interaction.
It's also clear that, in addition to Patsy's well-known bawdy, man's woman personality, she was an extremely devoted wife and mother, happy in her second marriage.
I found these letters particularly interesting because I own one of those 4-disc sets with all of her recordings, some of which have Patsy talking to the audience on them. Hearing her speech patterns and then reading the letters...she wrote just like she spoke, or vice versa. Her mannerisms provided a charm that isn't as apparent on paper, though, imo.
I don't normally like reading collections of letters, or diaries, unless the person consented to their publication; but I love Patsy Cline's songs so much, I gave it a try. This isn't really a good book, in literary terms, because it was never intended to be anything more than business letters to someone she became friendly with; but it's a realistic glimpse of a talented person we lost too soon, who should have had a much longer and more productive career. :(