For Once in My Life: Rob Cole's Authorized Biography of Dancer Arlinda Willis

Which For Once in My Life is this? Several books share the title, including an Australian romance by Karly Lane. This page covers the 2026 nonfiction book For Once in My Life: The Authorized Biography of Arlinda Willis by Rob Cole, published on August 27, 2026 by Margot Erickson Publishing.

Who Arlinda Willis was

Willis grew up in rural Alabama during the civil rights era and attended high school in Cleveland, where her mother lived. She built a career as a dancer and also worked in the corporate world. After the 2008 financial crisis, she set out on a new career. Her later years were shaped by struggles with addiction and with cancer.

A biography written by a friend

Cole and Willis met when they worked for the same firm in San Francisco and became close friends who cared for each other through hard times. That friendship is the book's foundation and its lens. Cole draws on their conversations and interviews with Willis’s family and friends to build a picture of someone who was reserved about her own story. The chapter titles are song titles, a choice that ties the narrative to her musical tastes and to the era she lived through. The book's own title echoes the classic song "For Once in My Life," famously recorded by Stevie Wonder.

How it was reviewed

Foreword Reviews gave the book a Clarion rating of three out of five. Its reviewer called it an insightful, admiring biography about shared struggles and formative relationships. The review also noted limits: Willis's cancer dominates much of the text, her stage career gets relatively little space, and the book's attention to frustrating encounters with insurers and hospitals pulls focus from the portrait of Willis herself.

Why books like this get written

Authorized biographies of people who were not household names are a growing part of independent publishing. They often begin as a friend's or relative's tribute and find readers among people who knew the subject and among readers interested in the history the subject lived through, here the civil rights South, the Great Migration north, and the arts and business worlds of San Francisco. For writers considering a similar project, the Foreword review is a useful reminder that readers want the subject's achievements on the page as well as the illness and the friendship.

Book details

• Title: For Once in My Life: The Authorized Biography of Arlinda Willis
• Author: Rob Cole
• Publisher: Margot Erickson Publishing
• Published: August 27, 2026
• Length: 328 pages
• Price: $18.99
• ISBN: 9798995709428