A great American love story, this warm, funny, revealing memoir introduces the world to Norman Mailer’s greatest inspiration, his wife of more than thirty years. Like Zelda Fitzgerald before her, Norris Church Mailer has led a life as large and as colorful as her husband’s—and every bit as engaging. Growing up a strict Free Will Baptist in the South of the 1950s, Norris Church, christened Barbara Jean Davis, was crowned “Little Miss Little Rock” at the age of three and always knew that life had more to offer her than the comforts of small-town Arkansas. But she could never have guessed that in her early twenties she would date future president Bill Clinton (and predict his national victory even after he lost his first run for Congress), or that the following year she would meet Norman Mailer, who was passing through town giving a lecture at the local college. They fell in love in one night—and their marriage lasted thirty-three years. Despite her enduring love for the man, Norris found life with the writer full of challenges—from carving out her own niche in the wake of five ex-wives and numerous former girlfriends, to easing her way into the hearts of her seven stepchildren, to negotiating the ferocious world of Mailer’s fame, friends, and literary life. The couple’s New York parties were legendary, and their social circle included such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, Jacqueline Kennedy, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and Imelda Marcos. Their decades-long obsession with each other, as seen in the intimate letters that Norris reveals here for the first time, was not without tests and infidelities; theirs was a marriage full of friendship, betrayal, doubts, understanding, and deep, complicated, lifelong passion. With southern charm and wit, Norris Church Mailer depicts the full evolution of her life, from her childhood all the way through her intense marriage with Norman and his heartbreaking death. This unforgettable memoir will enchant readers with its honesty and insight into how we grow up and how we love. This candid, entertaining memoir proves that Norman Mailer wasn't the only talented writer in the family. Norris unveils her life story with warmth, wit, and grit, despite some occasionally precious prose. While a few critics were disturbed by Norris's stated willingness to stifle her individuality and ambitions to please her temperamental husband, her frankness in sharing many of the grim and often humiliating particulars won them over, and she provides plenty of juicy details about Norman and his contemporaries. Skimming over his body of work, Norris paints an affectionate, if unappealing, portrait of Mailer as husband and father, and A Ticket to the Circus is a love story, as well as "both guilty pleasure and good read" ( Cleveland Plain Dealer ). The sixth (and last) wife of Norman Mailer, Norris Church Mailer, met the late writer in 1975, when she was 26 and he twice her age; they were married for 27 years. Her memoir is, among other things, the story of a series of emancipations: from the constraints of her loving but limiting parents and the claustrophobic moralism of her Arkansas hometown; from her first marriage to a man she quickly outgrew; and from her inhibitions about writing and creating art. And even though this book is very much a love story, chronicling the ups and downs of the author’s stormy relationship with one of the twentieth-century’s gale-force literary personalities, another theme is the author’s complicated emotional emancipation from Norman, precipitated by discovery of his many extramarital dalliances but also perhaps by the simple passage of time. All of this happens amid circumstances that are consistently larger than life: parties with the New York literati, summers in Provincetown, and socializing with Imelda Marcos after a Mohammad Ali fight. There’s even a cameo by a young William Jefferson Clinton. Captivating and often tender, this tale of personal growth also functions as something of a counterpoint to The Last Party (2003), a memoir by Norman’s second wife, Adele Mailer. --Brendan Driscoll "In this blazingly alive memoir of her 32 years with the late Norman Mailer, sixth wife Norris Church Mailer proves herself every bit as fascinating as her illustrious mate. Her narrative glitters with famous faces and events, from Bob Dylan and Bill Clinton (whom she dated) to the 1975 Ali fight in the Philippines…. ‘I’ll never write about you. Nobody would believe it,’ Norris often told him. You'll be glad she did." —People Magazine, four stars "Norris Church Mailer’s reminiscence, A Ticket to the Circus, still manages to add a fat new sheaf to the public dossier on her late husband, Norman Mailer, and tells an involving coming-of-age story to boot… She shows exactly what type of woman could tolerate and at least partly subdue such a king-size corkscrew of a man. The book will be of interest to anyone who works in a university marriage lab. It also shows that Norman wasn