The Bookmaker's Daughter

The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound is a memoir by Shirley Abbott, who was from Hot Springs (Garland County). Published by Ticknor and Fields in 1991, it was a Book of the Month club selection and a New York Times Notable Book. It was reissued by the University of Arkansas Press in 2006. Its subject matter is best described as Abbott’s loving but clear-eyed look at her childhood with her father, who made his living from gambling in Hot Springs by taking illegal bets on horse races as a bookmaker or “bookie.”

Shirley Jean Abbott Tomkievicz, who was born in 1934, was the only child of Velma Loyd Abbott, who was a homemaker, and Alfred Bemont Abbott, nicknamed “Hat.” After leaving Arkansas for college, Shirley Abbott had a successful career in New York City as a writer, historian, and magazine editor. In 2008, she was named to the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. She died in 2019.

Turning her eye to the place of her childhood, Abbott wrote The Bookmaker’s Daughter in 1991 following the success of her 1983 book Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South. While Womenfolks concerned her mother’s side of the family, The Bookmaker’s Daughter concentrated on her father. The book is divided into chapters covering various themes, such as “How He Brought Me into the World,” “How He Earned Our Living, “How They Stayed Married,” “Decline and Fall,” and “The End of Order.”

Hat Abbott, a self-styled “gentleman bandit,” had been born in Indiana and was considered a smart, streetwise risk-taker who made a good living taking bets in the illicit gambling houses of Hot Springs. He valued education, having taught himself classical literature, and strongly encouraged his daughter’s love of reading.

Abbott’s prose is lyrical with tragi-comic undertones, in one instance writing about her father being a bookmaker, “which, as my mother found out soon enough, did not mean that he stitched up fine leather volumes (he had allowed her to believe this while they were courting).” Abbott writes that “he was, a few flaws aside, a wonderful father and a very good bookmaker…but he eventually fell on hard times, grew ill, and died.” She states that some of the most significant lessons her father taught her were about the importance of words as well as the power of politics, which she says can be best defined as: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

She noted that, when she was a child, her father’s pay envelope always contained cash, not a paycheck. As she grew up, she came to understand the underlying truth about Hot Springs, that “illegal gambling, conducted openly, was the heart of the local economy.” While Abbott writes affectionately about her hometown and about the South, she does not gloss over the dark underside of either, writing: “To most of what has vanished from Hot Springs, from Arkansas, and from the South, from that time to this, I can cheerfully say good riddance.” She cites examples such as political corruption, poor schools, religious bigotry, racism, and lynchings.

Things changed in the nation, and certainly in Hot Springs, when World War II ended in 1945, with soldiers returning home to find they could not tolerate their state’s blatant corruption after having fought overseas for democratic ideals. This led to a political reform movement that became known as the GI Revolt, which took place during political campaigns in Arkansas during the late 1940s. Much of the focus was on Hot Springs and Garland County, where local war hero Sid McMath organized fellow veterans to challenge corrupt political leadership. Their success led to the shut-down of illegal gambling in Hot Springs, leaving bookmaker Hat Abbott unemployed.

In the book, Hat buys land in rural Garland County to become a “gentleman farmer,” a venture that did not turn out well. The family sank into poverty, and Hat fell into despair as the world around him was changing. Shirley received a scholarship and left Hot Springs for college in Texas, followed by becoming a Fulbright scholar and embarking on a writing career in New York. Her father felt she had abandoned him, although she says that one of the main lessons he taught her was not to depend on any man. As noted poignantly by the author, Hat Abbott died at age sixty-three, “a man capable of much who had accomplished little.”

References include family trips to Little Rock (Pulaski County), which at the time took half a day by car. She spotlights McMath, whom she calls “one of Arkansas’ truly great men….Had not the snare of state politics prevented his rise on the national scene, he might well have been the first American president from Arkansas.” Other references include Arkansans like former president Bill Clinton, gangster Owney Madden, former U.S. senator David Pryor, and former governor Winthrop Rockefeller. She highlights local landmarks in Hot Springs such as the Arlington Hotel, the Belvedere Country Club and Casino, the Southern Club (“known to the entire horse-playing nation”), and the thermal waters of the town’s therapeutic springs.

Reviews of The Bookmaker’s Daughter were positive. Kirkus Reviews noted Abbott’s depiction of Hot Springs in the 1930s and 1940s as “a town openly and cheerfully corrupt, with rigged elections, a thriving race-track gambling business, and a general harmony born of everyone knowing their place.”

For additional information:
Abbott, Shirley. The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991.

———. Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983.

Dishongh, Kim. “Shirley Jean Abbott Tomkievicz.” Arkansas Democrat Gazette, May 25, 2008. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2008/may/25/shirley-jean-abbott-tomkievicz-20080525/ (accessed November 20, 2024).

Review of The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/shirley-abbott-4/the-bookmakers-daughter-a-memory-unbound/ (accessed November 20, 2024).

Sayers, Valerie. “A Hot Springs Education.” New York Times, August 4, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/04/books/a-hot-springs-education.html (accessed November 20, 2024).

Nancy Hendricks
Garland County Historical Society