The Three of Us

Growing up as the only child of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Georgette Jones mingled with country music royalty even as she witnessed her mother's physical and spiritual deterioration and endured her father's lack of warmth and love. Tammy (Stand by Your Man, 1979) and George (I Lived To Tell It All, 1996) have told their own stories, and Georgette Jones's sister, Jackie Daly, wrote Tammy Wynette: A Daughter Recalls Her Mother's Tragic Life and Death in 2000; this memoir provides little new insight. As is typical of family memoirs, events pile up, and Jones reflects little on them. If there is more of Tammy than George in this often superficial book, it is only because Jones struggles mightily to understand the way her mother tried—and often failed—to achieve balance between her personal life and her very public music career. Jones learns from her mother's death that it's never too late to change, and she is now building a good relationship with her father.