"I remember every little thing about every little thing," Dolly Parton once noted, referring to her songs' vibrant images. In the exhaustive biography Ain't Nobody's Fool, Martha Ackmann (These Fevered Days) follows the icon's lead, sharing copious details of her life from her impoverished childhood to her legendary music and performance career.
With quotations, research, and anecdotes starting from Parton's Tennessee roots, Ackmann presents a touching and honest portrait of the multifaceted artist. Though Parton found fame as a singer, she knew she was part of a music business, and her talents in that area helped her become a multimillionaire. She rebranded a theme park near her childhood home as Dollywood, remaking the local economy in the process, and founded the Imagination Library, which has mailed more than 264 million free books to children since 1995. She wisely kept the publishing rights to her songs, and "I Will Always Love You" earned millions in royalties after Whitney Houston's award-winning hit. The poignant history of that song resonates: Parton sang it with a sometimes cantankerous early mentor, Nashville performer and producer Porter Wagoner, at the Grand Ole Opry shortly before he died.
When Parton boarded a Nashville-bound bus the day after graduating from Sevier County High School, she launched a 60-year career that includes a who's who of musicians and actors, as well as numerous honors. And it's those Tennessee roots that helped her at every turn. "My truest gift," she notes, "is that sound that comes from the mountains." Fans of Dolly Parton--as beloved performer or successful businesswoman--will rejoice in this entertaining biography of the near-octogenarian from the Smoky Mountains. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.