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New Age trailblazer Linda Goodman wrote best-selling books and empowered millions with astrology’s insights. Strong willed, complicated and fiercely independent, she had three husbands, six kids, legions of fans, and extraordinary success. An idealistic seeker, she believed she could create the world she chose; yet with her daughter’s suicide at 21, she shrank from reality. Dazzled by the Light covers Linda’s West Virginia roots, her relationship struggles, professional achievements and financial setbacks. Enriched with in-depth research, vivid portraits of New Age figures, friends’ candid recollections, and Linda’s effervescent prose, this comprehensive biography illuminates the life and times of an enigmatic icon.
Love Letters radio show, 1957
Before Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs success, her most successful project was a radio show called “Love Letters from Linda.” She was preoccupied with love, and was an adroit letter writer; “Love Letters” combined the two. Her show aired in Pittsburgh, where the family had moved in 1957.
From the perspective of a mother of three in a secure marriage, the project may have helped put her sometimes tumultuous past in context. We can envision Linda writing passionate letters to her ex-husband Bill Snyder overseas in the 1940s, while listening to sentimental standards on the radio. Then ten years later imagining penning the loving and supportive missives she would have preferred, or the kind of letters she and her current husband Sam might have exchanged.
The show allowed her to relive her younger days when life held few limitations or responsibilities, when she was a beauty pageant contestant. Linda was the writer and the announcer for the show, which featured romantic songs from the 1940s. She probably read letters she’d created to depict correspondence between soldiers and their sweethearts at home.
“Love Letters” was broadcast in October of 1957 on Monday and Thursday evenings on WJAS in downtown Pittsburgh, and ran through 1961. Linda probably refreshed the letters and switched up the songs. She, herself, was often nostalgic for the past. But the show was innovative, since “oldies” radio didn’t become popular until the 1960s and ‘70s. Once the family moved to New York City, Goodman set her sights on bigger things.
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Dazzled by the Light book page: https://karenchristino.com/books/dazzled-by-the-light-linda-goodman/
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Dazzled on Amazon: https://link.amazon/B0hZwAWIm
