Recommended Reading: The Queen, by Josh Levin

So I did warn you in the "About Me" section that from time to time I might post about books. I'm not going to do formal reviews like on my old blog, and I'm only going to talk about books that I recommend. And only once in a while- but today's the day to start.

I just finished the audiobook of The Queen, by Josh Levin; in it, Levin tells the story of a woman best known as Linda Taylor, who unbeknownst to her, served as the basis for Ronald Reagan's "welfare queen" stereotype in the late 1970s and 1980s. But this isn't the story you might think it is. Linda Taylor was no innocent victim, even if a version of her story was used to both hurt the poor and benefit Reagan's political career. She was perhaps one of the great con artists of the mid to late 20th century, a woman who spent her life stealing, cheating, kidnapping, and perhaps even murdering, all in the name of an endless need for money and standing.

Officially, Taylor was born Martha Louise White to a pair of white parents; but in fact she was biracial, and at a time when admitting she had slept with a black man would have sent her mother to jail. Taylor used her ambiguous appearance to her advantage and pushed back against the limitations imposed on her by race by passing herself off as or being taken for white, black, Mexican, Hawaiian and Filipina and that was only one aspect of herself that she changed, manipulated or obfuscated. She used dozens of aliases, impersonated an heiress, moved all over the country changing her story every time, and posited herself and her friends as blood family. She posed as members of different professions, even working as a nurse and posing as a doctor, a psychic and more.

She fabricated robberies and committed them too. She neglected and abandoned her own children as she kidnapped and trafficked other children- the list goes on. She probably killed three people just to collect on them. And as the horrors- and the bodies- piled up, her story becomes more and more grotesque.  When it came to the kidnappings and even the murders, either the victims weren't important enough to the police or they just weren't able to make anything stick. The only thing she was ever convicted of was welfare fraud.

Interlaced with Taylor's story is the story of how Ronald Reagan  used her and other stories to push his own political agendas. Levin also covers how Bill Clinton later exploited the same and other stereotypes also for political gain. One thing that I admire about the book is how Levin balances the two parts. Reagan and later Clinton made up stories to make the points they wanted to make, regardless of the truth and Levin paints a world complicated enough to allow for corruption on their side and on Taylor's.

The Queen is a wild ride for sure. Linda Taylor was a "karma Houdini" who is remembered, when she is at all, for only the most trivial of her misdeeds. She was a liar, a thief, a kidnapper and a slow motion serial killer- and she got away with virtually all of it.  I highly recommend it and audio is a great way to go. January LaVoy is an engaging narrator who held my attention the whole way through all 12-plus listening hours. What a story.