Johnny's Girl: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in Alaska's Underworld

In this engaging memoir, the author, a journalist raised in Alaska and now living in New York City, probes her late parents' past. Rich was 15 years old in 1973 when her father, Johnny Rich Jr., a well-known mobster in Anchorage, was murdered. Her mother, Ginger, a former stripper, had died the previous year. Although they both grew up in New England, Johnny and Ginger met in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Soon they embarked for Alaska, where Johnny became a big man about town and Ginger would soon begin her sojourn through a series of mental institutions. Rich traces and plumbs official records to capture the minutiae and major moments of her parents' lives, including their deaths. Along the way, she comes to terms with her relationships with her parents, especially her father: ``Now I'm beginning to like being Johnny's girl.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)