The Knife-Thrower's Assistant: Memoirs of a Human Target

by Ronnie Claire Edwards, Fannie Flagg (Foreword by)

For years, a close circle of friends have been thrilled and enchanted by actress Ronnie Claire Edwards' vivid and hilarious stories–tall tales and yarns that have earned her a reputation as one of Hollywood's greatest raconteurs. Now, for the first time, Edwards has taken pen in hand to write those precious stories down so she can share them with a larger audience. And the strangest thing is–they're all true! In a unique voice reminiscent of both Mark Twain and Eudora Welty, Edwards recounts the adventures that made hers a life unlike any other, filled with the quirky, the hair-raising, and the absurd. She writes about performing at rowdy (not to mention dangerous) mining camps, her strange and mystical experiences with the gypsies, and her true-life adventures as the Knife-Thrower's Assistant. Ronnie Claire Edwards creates a style all her own, what Fannie Flagg, in her Foreword, calls "Oklahoma Gothic." If there wasn't such a thing before–there certainly is now.

150 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2000

Reviews

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronnie Claire is a funny, funny woman. She and I have mutual friends who invited her to do a reading at my book club, so I heard many of these stories firsthand. I'm not sure the book would be as funny without her voice in my head as I read it, but it did make me laugh. Of course, I am a sucker for cornball humor.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how this book came to my attention but it has been on my Amazon Wish list for a few years now. I have recently been watching "The Walton's" in reruns and I remembered about Ronnie's book.

I did get my book used from Amazon and my first pleasant surprise was that it was autographed. My 2nd surprise was all the stories in the book.

Ronnie writes 98% about her relatives and only a short chapter about her days in a mining town with a troop of actors.

What a family she has. Everyone from her fathers letters in each chapter to the male relative with the monkey who then buys a flea circus is a character. With a family as wild, eccentric and dramatic as she had it's easy to understand how she ended up as an actress. Turns out her role on The Walton's was perfect and after reading this book I could see so much of Ronnie's mother in the role of Corabeth.

[Lisa Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful!!!

[Nancy Cook-senn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This outlandish and amusing memoir tells tales of the early years of the actress, best known for playing Cousin Cora Beth on The Waltons, who was a native of Oklahoma City and studied drama at the University of Oklahoma. Her mother preferred reading over housework and child care. Her father was elected county attorney until the newspaper editor discovered he couldn’t be controlled. Their home was filled with eccentrics – the divorced aunt and uncle who lived on different floors, the neighbor child who moved in at age 5 and was left behind when his family moved away, the kimono-clad kook in the attic who spent years rewriting the Old Testament, and sundry orphans and down-and-out entrepreneurs. Then we hear of her early years in show business when she really was the knife thrower’s assistant. “All the heat for hell is warmed up in a tent in Oklahoma in the summer.”
I wish she had written more.