Book Review
You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes

By Laura Love
Reviewed by Bill London
from the December 2004 Newsletter

By now, most Moscow residents have had a chance to catch Laura Love and her band at one of her RenFair appearances or maybe at her Rendezvous at the Park show. Her music is a local fave – and for good reason. Laura is fun, witty, and joyful. The “Afro-Celtic” rhythms she pounds out are danceable and delightful.

If you’ve experienced the show, you should read the book. Laura Love has written her autobiography, what she calls a “memoir” of her childhood and the pain, racism, poverty and bitterness that nearly crushed her.

Laura and her sister Lisa lived with their mother Wini, a certifiable nut case who almost killed the girls several times and repeatedly led them into foster homes and homelessness.

Laura tells those sad, tragic, and frighteningly bizarre tales with lightness and humor. Each memory is framed and told quickly, in short chapters that make for a very easy read.

While the reading is easy, the story is profound. The depth of her soul-searching, and the brutal honesty of her revelations, reveal the same integrity found in her songs.

Laura Love’s autobiography is one of the finest memoirs I have ever read.

Maybe you will believe that assessment if I quote a short passage about one of the turning points in her life: her first public singing experience.

On stage for the first time in her life, at a junior high school talent show for parents and students, she completed her song, accompanied by her guitar, “and to my astonishment, the whole auditorium leaped to its feet and began a thunderous clapping and hooting that shook the rafters….there in the Everett Junior High School auditorium, soaking up all that positive energy, I understood that I would never do anything else for the rest of my life but sing.”

Laura Love’s book is available at BookPeople and at the library at Moscow.

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