Born in 1926, Annie Whitaker Richie could have grown up to be exactly like most of the other girls living in this period – quiet, submissive, a housewife and a stay-at-home mom, and someone with no life outside of the four walls they call ‘home’.
Yet despite the negative and demeaning experiences she endured from her own mother during a difficult childhood and the cultural norm of restriction for women, she fought to break free of the general mould labeled "proper wife" and went on to live an uncommon and invigorating life. Call her forward-thinking, call her educated, or call her liberated. But to her husband - and the author of her biography - she’s just ‘My Annie’.
My Annie: The True to Life Story of a Liberated Woman Written by her Husband is an extensive biography. Written by her loving husband, the story follows Annie from the time she was a little girl, through college and their courtship, through four children and two surprise overseas adoptions, (where they went over to Korea for one child and came back with two), through international travels and volunteering, and up to present day where she happily lives with Douglas Richie in Carlsbad, California.
She describes the high points in her life but she also shares the low ones – her husband’s firing and brush with a breakdown, the eventual break from the two difficult Korean adoptees, and running away from her family to the tropical islands of Hawaii. Her amazing story is one of hope, faith, and determination.
My Annie will be a cherished find for fans of biographies and autobiographies. The vivid recounting of events is genuine and heartfelt, while the sheer amount of detail included is surprising and impressive!
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