{"product_id":"for-once-in-my-life-the-authorized-biography-of-arlinda-willis-paperback","title":"For Once in My Life: The Authorized Biography of Arlinda Willis - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eRob Cole\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn this authorized biography set in twentieth-century Black America, Arlinda Willis, a sharecropper's granddaughter from Jim Crow Alabama, fights to earn a love she does not yet know she already has, while a healthcare system she trusts dismisses her.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn in 1951, in Toxey, Alabama, Arlinda grows up in the shadow of Jim Crow racism, raised by grandparents on a small farm while her mother builds a new life in Cleveland, Ohio. When she finally travels north to reunite with her family, she believes love must be earned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe earns love as a teenager, dancing on Upbeat, Cleveland's nationally syndicated music television show, performing alongside Stevie Wonder and James Brown, integrating the American airwaves while the Civil Rights Movement is reshaping the country on the streets below. She competes in the first Miss Black Cleveland pageant. She builds a distinguished career at one of San Francisco's most prestigious law firms. Each achievement quiets the voice that tells her she is not enough.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the law firm in 1994, she meets Rob Cole, a white British immigrant, who spends the next eighteen years as her closest friend, caregiver, and biographer. Their honest, funny, and sometimes difficult friendship crosses generational and racial lines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen esophageal cancer strips away her independence and her carefully constructed image of strength, Arlinda encounters a healthcare system that dismisses her pain, minimizes her symptoms, and tells her one story while recording another in her medical notes. The gap between what her doctors say and what they write is a pattern. That pattern has a name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor Once in My Life\u003c\/em\u003e is the authorized biography thirty years in the making, a portrait of what can be gained and what is lost to care for someone you love. It follows Arlinda Willis from the sharecropping communities of the Alabama Black Belt through the Great Migration, the stages of Cleveland's Black entertainment scene, the corridors of San Francisco's legal world, and into a final chapter defined by medical racism, unconditional love, and the hardest lesson of her extraordinary life: That she is enough as she is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublished on August 27, 2026, on what would have been Arlinda's 75th birthday, and the 63rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s \"I Have a Dream\" speech.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSome content in this book, which includes brief scenes of violence, allusion to child sexual assault, suicide ideation, and sexuality insensitivity, may activate the reader.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor readers of Isabel Wilkerson's \u003cem\u003eThe Warmth of Other Suns\u003c\/em\u003e, Keisha N. Blain's \u003cem\u003eUntil I Am Free\u003c\/em\u003e, and Paul Kalanithi's \u003cem\u003eWhen Breath Becomes Air\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 334\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.75 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e August 27, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50477730038008,"sku":"9798995709428","price":25.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0698\/5629\/7208\/files\/Y-A1xgMVpu9798995709428.webp?v=1789019459","url":"https:\/\/barneysbooksellers.com\/products\/for-once-in-my-life-the-authorized-biography-of-arlinda-willis-paperback","provider":"Barney's Book Sellers","version":"1.0","type":"link"}