Elvis in the Twilight of Memory

On the 20th anniversary of the King's death, after sordid memoirs almost too numerous to count, comes this refreshingly sweet story of a young, innocent, talented and devastatingly handsome Elvis and his first girlfriend, Juanico. They met in 1955, both still in their teens, when he was ""virtually unknown"" and, for Juanico, ""trying not to fall in love with Elvis was next to impossible."" Two well-mannered Southern youngsters, the pair spent their limited time together visiting amusement parks, riding motorcycles and playing with firecrackers. Juanico accompanied Elvis on tour, a rock-band road trip that seems amazingly tame today. The rocker whom Juanico knew and loved was a gentleman, a loving son. He never used drugs and ""his strongest drink was a Coke."" But as his fame grew, so did the inevitable stresses of wild fans and lack of privacy, as well as increasing control by Colonel Tom Parker, his manager. ""There was never any love lost between me and Colonel Tom,"" Juanico asserts, as she describes Parker's pressure on Elvis to stop seeing her. By 1957, tired of waiting for the phone to ring and of reading about Elvis's other women in the newspapers, Juanico started dating someone else and became engaged. This remarkably detailed memoir contains no venom and no shocking revelations; there are no claims of having his secret love child or even of having sex with the King. Instead, readers are taken back to the earliest, halcyon days of the babyboomers' collective memories. (Aug.)