Wild Bird: The True Jazz Age Tale of Ruth Wightman Morris

A California native, John A. Greenwald is a graduate of UC Berkeley and a former copywriter for several major advertising agencies. He later became a teacher and began helping high school students learn how to write. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Monterey.

It wasn't that Ruth Wightman Morris didn't know the rules-it was that she lived to break them. Fiercely defying expectations in every area of her life, Ruth was at the forefront of the Jazz Age revolution. She was a woman who could captivate every man in the nightclub-and the next day set the women's speed record in a race car, perform a stunt in a plane, or get in the ring with a bull. Hers was a life of great successes and great sorrows, fabulous parties and headline-grabbing scandals, love affairs that could not endure and a dead body that could not be explained. And until now, her story has gone untold. In John A. Greenwald's true tale, we follow this Roman candle of a woman from coast to coast and across the seas, sharing in her adventures as a rebel and pioneer and witnessing the tragic downfall that led to her early death. Here, at last, is her story-and like the woman herself, it is unforgettable, inimitable, and wild.