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TAR HEEL BOOKS & MUSIC

Kid Carolina: R.J. Reynolds, Fr., A Tobacco Fortune and the Mysterious Death of a Southern Icon
by Heidi Schnakenberg. Center Street, 2010, 333 pages, hardback, $23.99.

This biography of Winston-Salem native R.J. “Dick” Reynolds Jr. resembles a classic, Southern, Gothic novel. But this well-researched, stranger-than-fiction tale of the life and death of a rich and restless man is all too true.

California-based screenwriter Heidi Schnakenberg crafted a book that readers can easily envision on the silver screen--maybe even filmed in black-and-white in film noir style. The movie would probably be panned because all of its events certainly couldn’t happen to just one man. But they did.

Although anchored in North Carolina, Reynold's life unfolds like a Hollywood script: four marriages and three hotly contested divorces involving high drama and millions of dollars; jet and yacht excursions around the world; multiple mansions (from Winston-Salem’s Fifth Street and the famed Reynolda House to Georgia’s Sapelo Island, Manhattan, and Palm Beach); alcohol and tobacco addictions (lots of liquor and unfiltered Camels); and several mysterious deaths, including his own.

At times, Kid Carolina can read like a term paper--the source notes and bibliography stretch to 35 pages--but it’s a good read that would have earned an A or A+ in any classroom. With his home state as the backdrop for many dramatic scenes, “North Carolina’s Prince of Wales” comes back to life in this book.