Margaret Jones

"...Patsy is a masterful study of an American master. It's the most meticulously researched and insightful of the three Cline biographies published thus far. Jones captures Cline in all of her vitality and passion, while showing how Cline rose from poverty to stardom."
Steve Neal, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Author Margaret Jones is a virtual unknown, but her book, Patsy, deserves to be the definitive work on the subject. Jones has dug deeper, done more interviews, uncovered more facts, and gotten more history correctly than nearly any book on the market today. Richly detailed, it succeeds both as biography and as a research work on country music of the '50s and early '60s."
Rich Kienzle, Country Music Magazine

"...[Patsy] Cline has never before been the subject of an unflinching, unbiased and, most important, Nashville-apolitical biography. Author Margaret Jones' Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline is the first portrait of the hillbilly torch singer with real fur on it--the book offers a depth, breadth and height of reality that is both fascinating and repellent." Jonny Whiteside, L.A. Weekly

"Jones deftly weaves together salty interview quotes from such contemporaries as Loretta Lynn, June Carter (with whom Patsy did two-women shows) and Barbara Mandrell, then a child star, whom Patsy protected from crude adult shenanigans. Jones produces entertaining, lively sound bites and pithy evaluations. She also draws out the last days of Patsy Cline over fifteen pages--a novelist's technique, suspenseful and well-done and devastating to the end."
Emily Toth, Women's Review of Books

Reviewed along with Hank Williams: The Biography, by Colin Escott):
"… Colin Escott and Margaret Jones have written books that are biographies and social histories, too. They have pored over records and documents, talked to anyone who had anything useful or interesting to say, and kept the stories moving without pomposity or too much glibness. Ms. Jones likes to let her informants advance her tale and air their views; Mr. Escott runs a tighter narrative ship and is more knowing about the details of the music. Read separately they redeem these performers from years of sentimental memoir writing and movie making. Read together they give us a full-bodied portrait of mass culture, as it simultaneously elevates and mangles its artists and its art forms."
Margo Jefferson, The New York Times

Reviewed along with Hank Williams: The Biography, by Colin Escott): "…These excellent biographies attempt to place their subjects in the context of the music industry of their day and show how that industry, in Jones’ words, “was transformed almost overnight from a regional anomaly to a multimilliondollar industry.” To say that both volumes are essential additions to the history of our own local culture could pretty well sum it up.… Both books have the potential to become the country hit of the year. If you close your eyes in between chapters, you can almost hear the music.
Rick Tamble, Nashville Banner