One and Only

August 29, 2011
Other books on the beats have shown slight glimpses of Lu Anne Henderson, the “one true love” of Jack Kerouac’s sidekick Neal Cassady, but none does it as candidly as this new insider account of the creative forces of the movement that rocked America in the late 1950s. This book, co-written by Kerouac biographer Nicosia (Memory Babe) and Henderson’s daughter Santos, presents Henderson’s recollections: meeting Cassady at age 15 in Denver (Cassady was four years older); soon becoming his wife before his trek to New York City with a stolen car. Interviewed shortly before her death, Henderson emerges as a clear-eyed sensualist, wise beyond her years, entirely up to the sometimes zany antics of Kerouac and Cassady’s gang. Although she had a three-way sex session with Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, her kindest words are for the quiet, brooding literary genius Kerouac. Henderson also had a few snarky things to say about her rival, Carolyn, who later married Cassady. In the end, this bold, confidential look presents Henderson as a sturdy survivor in the bohemian movement, which evaporated swiftly but whose influence persists.