Whitcoulls Recommends: We Burn Daylight and Cher: The Memoir, Part One

We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston. This is a novel based on the infamous 1993 Waco siege between the FBI and a cult known as the Branch Davidians (named after David Koresh, their leader). A cult has been established in the same area, led by a charlatan named Perry Cullen who is known as The Lamb, and the story centres on two star crossed teenagers who are caught up amongst it. Jaye’s mother is a devotee of The Lamb and she and Jaye are living in the compound, while Roy’s Dad is the local sheriff who’s becoming increasingly worried about the cult stockpiling weapons and the potential for disaster. The kids find themselves at the centre of something apocalyptic.

Cher: The Memoir, Part One. This is Cher’s account of her life up until the early 1980s - there’s so much material it’s been split into two books and the second will come next year. It’s a fascinating read - her family background and upbringing were unconventional, to say the least, along with the story of her marriages to Sonny Bono and Greg Allman, and the highs and lows of her early professional life. As we all know, she’s had - and is still having - an extraordinary career, which is well worth reading about. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Time to talk books now, and I'm joined by Joan McKenzie.
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
We burned Daylight by Brett Anthony Johnson. This looks really interesting.
This is a novel though.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yes it is. It's a fashion Yes it is. I
first came across him about ten years ago. He wrote
a book called Remember Me Like This, which I just adored,
and I think this is I think it's his third
so anyway, yes, it is a novel, but it is
predicated on the infamous siege in Waco, Texas, back in
nineteen ninety three that some listeners may remember when there

(00:46):
was a cult which was called the Branch Davidian and
it was named after the cult leader whose name was
David David Koresh, and the FBI became terribly concerned about
the stockpiling of weapons and other illicit behavior going on
inside the compound, and they stormed it and there was
a siege that lasted, I think from memory, about thirteen days.
And in this book we have in the same location

(01:07):
a cult which comes to town and sets up a
compound and There are two teenagers who are at the
heart of this story, Roy and Jay, and they're kind
of on opposing sides because Roy's dad is the local
sheriff and he's terribly concerned about the stockpiling of weapons
and the fact that the leader of the cult, who's
a guy called Perry Cullen, although he likes to be
known as the Lamb, he has an interest in girls

(01:32):
and young women, and the authorities are increasingly concerned about
the volatility of this encampment. And then there's a young girl,
she's fourteen years old. Her name is Jay, and her
mother is a devity of the Lamb, and they're living
inside the camp. And these two kids meet up and
it's kind of like Star Cross Teenagers. There's a little
bit of Romeo and Juliet in the background of this story,

(01:55):
and these two kids find that they become caught up
in something which is truly apocalyptic.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I can remember, so can I very very clearly.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
That was in the early days TV coverage of that
kind of thing, wasn't it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Hey, Cher has a new book out called The Memoir,
Part one.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
She does and she is simply extraordinary. It is Part
one because there's so much to her life that it
was decided to do it in two books, unlike Barbara
Streisand last year, who published her memoir at one thousand
pages in hardcover. And I think most people had trouble
holding up, So I think this is a very good decision.
And she starts right back in her early childhood, in fact,

(02:31):
predating her childhood. The story of her family you just
you couldn't make the stuff up. The story of her
family absolutely extraordinary. She says that her family was like
the opening of a Dickens novel, and she's not wrong.
Her grandmother had her mother when she was thirteen years old.
She met the man who became her husband when she
was twelve he was sixteen. Her mother had an amazing

(02:53):
singing voice, and during the Great Depression, her father used
to take around bars and get her to sing for money,
and they earned money, and she became the breadwinner of
the family at an extraordinarily young age, and her parents
eventually split up. But after a while, her father found
out where her mother was living and he was desperate
to get her back. She was too scared to tell
him that she'd married a Sicilian guy, and when he

(03:15):
found out that Chare's dad was back in the picture.
He came around and locked several of his teeth out,
and her dad was then tipped over the edge. And
one night Chaer, as a very young girl, woke up
to see her father in the room where she and
her brother were sleeping, turning on the gas to try
and kill them and running away. Terribly lucky that she
was awake to survive that awful event. But can you

(03:39):
imagine coming from those beginnings, She met Sonny in a
cafe in Los Angeles. She was sixteen, he was twenty seven.
They both wanted to be somebody. They both wanted to
go places. They obviously did, but they were up and down.
They made a lot of money, they lost a lot
of money. They tried to climb back up again, and
from playing large arenas and having their own television talk show,

(04:01):
they ended up going on the second and third rate
circuits and playing to tiny little audiences. One d they
played four people, and yet they had been knowing nationwide.
So it's an extraordinary story of the ups and downs.
She didn't know anything about their finances. She never asked,
he never told her anything. In fact, he hit it
and she discovered one day that he had signed her

(04:22):
up as an employee to their company, and he took
all the money, which he shared with the lawyer, and
she was paid a kind of minimum wage and your
salary with three weeks and your leave a year. And
when she tried to sort all that out, they eventually
just completely split up. Is this the first time she

(04:43):
has written, yes, a memoir? Yes, it is, and it is. Honestly,
it's extraordinary. She went on to have relationships with David Geffen,
who some listeners may know was a music mogul. He
started Geffen Records and went on to an extraordinary career.
She married Greg Allman of the Ormond Brothers, which lasted
about a day. She discovered that he was a he

(05:06):
an edit which he hadn't worked out prior to that.
So there's an awful lot knowing on life life and
this is only up until nineteen eighty. Oh my, imagine
what comes next. So that's gonna be a fabulous stocking
filler for the shares fan.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Thank you so much, Joan. We're burn Daylight by Brent
Anthony Johnston and also share the memoir Part one. We'll
talk next week.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
See you then.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen
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