The Strangest, Craziest People is a wild ride through one fateful summer in the lives of an eccentric show business family. The book follows a cast of unique characters and brings to life the wonders and weirdness of a New York childhood. It’s also about a segment of show business -- one filled with magicians, ventriloquists, jugglers and contortionists—that has faded away.
Performers Dorothy and Ted Harris family have hung on to their hopes for stardom and better times for many years, but now their chances for success are clearly disappearing.The narrator, their daughter, 15-year-old Ginger, is a wry observer who introduces us to the marvels of a native’s New York and gives us an insider’s view of the hilarity and madness of life offstage. As her career hopes fade, flamboyant Dorothy has hitched her hopes to a chance at stardom that a celebrity friend might offer. In the meantime, she suspects her husband, Ted, is having an affair and assigns Ginger to keep an eye on him. Ginger quickly realizes that the situation is far worse than even Dorothy imagines. As Dorothy hangs on to her last chance to achieve her dreams, Ginger must try to hold her family together while also finding her own place in the world. I laughed! I cried! You will too!
You know you grew up in a show business family on the Upper West Side if:
- As a child, you dozed off in half of the all-night diners in the New York metropolitan area.
- You knew that, even well after midnight, it could sometimes be hard to get a seat on the Broadway local subway.
- Nobody understood or believed what your parents did. You sometimes considered telling people they were in plastics.
- People in your building thought your family was very rich because your parents were home all day and didn’t seem to have jobs.
- If somebody had an upstairs neighbor who was a “real character,” your parents probably knew them. If somebody had an upstairs neighbor who was a “real character,” it probably was one of your parents.