I Walked the Line

The first Mrs Cash deserves our compassion, no one deserves to suffer public humiliation and to be betrayed before the entire world like she was. I guess she can't be faulted for wanting to write a book in order to feel seen, and acknowledged for the part she played in the Cash family. But her book is not valuable enough as a biography to say that it was a good piece of work.
The hundreds of love letters are overwhelming, and like a typical person I do not care about someone else's hundred love letters. No matter how beautiful they are. They don't really mean much to me when I know the marriage didn't last.
Ask for Vivian's narrative, clearly this 70 year old woman was willfully naive if she honestly believed that drugs and June Carter and everything else toward Johnny away from her. She can't accept the idea that Johnny may have gotten tired of life with her.
And then on top of all that she never moves on. She is still stuck on the idea that if only she had made it work with Johnny Cash, she would be happy today. This woman needed serious therapy. My goodness.
Please don't read this book, it's extremely disheartening.

Reader reviewed by Dede

I really wanted to read this book by Johnny Cash's first wife, especially after seeing Walk the Line. It was good in that it showed her side of the story, but she didn't go too deep into anything. It was interesting to see how she viewed their marriage and their life apart. My one complaint, and it's a big one, is that 269 pages of the book are letters from Johnny to Vivian while he was in the army. There was nothing to compare them to because she didn't include any of hers to him, but they very quickly become repetitive. Johnny wrote her almost every single day, which is sweet, but it got a bit annoying to read so many letters when alot of them said the same thing and there seemed to be a million "honeys" "sweeties" and "I love you's." After the letters there are 51 pages of Vivian describing things from her side of the story. This book would have been better if there were less letters and more Vivian Cash.