Born in a Dust Bowl dugout on the hard, flat plains

Born in a Dust Bowl dugout on the hard, flat plains

outside Lubbock, Texas, Sonny Curtis picked cotton as a kid, formed a band with

his high school friend Buddy Holly, and opened shows for Elvis--and that was

just by the age of twenty-two. Now at the end of his long career, Curtis is

considered a rock 'n' roll trailblazer. He toured the world with the Crickets

and with Waylon Jennings. He wrote the classic songs "I Fought the Law," "Love

Is All Around" (the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and the country

standard "I'm No Stranger to the Rain." Curtis has left an impression on

American myth and music that has gone heretofore undocumented. But to the author, Sonny was a loving if cryptic

father as elusive as the spotlight itself. Part biography, part memoir, *Daughter

of a Song* braids together an insider's perspective on an outsider's life.

With Sonny out on the road for long stretches, Sarah Curtis pieced his life and

legacy together through research and recollection, following her father from

the 1950s birth of rock 'n' roll in West Texas to the 1960s Hollywood scene

where Sonny met his wife, a Vietnam War protester and California hippie. The

two of them would leave Hollywood behind for the rural Tennessee cattle farm

where they raised Sarah. With vivid storytelling, cultural commentary, lyrical

prose, and a dose of humor, Daughter of a Song considers the

complexities of fate and fame, the cultures we shape and the ones that shape

us. It is the story of a man saved by art, and the daughter who must navigate

to the center of his creativity to reckon with her own.