I suppose its been around four years or so since Johnny Cash died. There have been a few books out, countless articles, a big-name movie that got an Oscar nod or two, all of them claiming to have the inside scoop, the real story on the real Man in Black. None, I repeat, none of them are as surprising as I Walked the Line.

The name on the cover reads Vivian Cash — Johnny’s first wife — but the book is comprised almost entirely of love letters to her, from him. The book traces the rise of their romance, when they met at an ice rink in 1951; his letters while overseas in Germany, during which time he promised her “oceans and oceans of love and devotion,” and encountered alcohol seriously for the first time; and their inevitable downfall, their relationship a victim of Johnny’s increasing fame and substance abuse.

This is a part of Johnny’s life that is routinely glossed over, and as The New York Times points out, the 2005 Cash movie Walk the Line ” presented [Vivian] as a nagging, ever-pregnant obstacle to his storybook romance with June Carter.” Vivian went on record saying once “[there are] people of the Nashville mind-set, who prefer that I be written out of Johnny’s history altogether.” The similarities between that story and this extend only to the names, and the side of Johnny shown here is a fiercely romantic one that is rarely, if ever, acknowledged.

Read The New York Times review of the book here.