Career journalists who attempt to write about their own family histories sometimes find they can’t separate their professional selves from their personal journeys. But Steve Luxenberg, an editor at the Washington Post, does not have this problem. Instead, he demonstrates his abundant writing skills and reporting talents by unearthing a story that is gripping, haunting, and real while telling it with just the right amount of professional distance and personal depth. The tale bounces through time and around the globe, illuminating life in a mental hospital in Depression-era Detroit, touching down in the Holocaust, traversing the sacred space between fathers and children, moving seamlessly from sadness to joy.
Luxenberg tells this family saga as if it were a detective story, revealing one layer at a time of the hidden world of an institutionalized aunt he was never told existed and the consequences of family secrets that, when revealed, imply lost worlds and private motives that have consequences down through the generations. Yet in his hands, the story comes to life, and this memoir displays the texture of social history as it sheds light on the power of love in Jewish families to overcome the secrets that drive us apart. Author’s note, family tree, index, notes. The paperback edition of this book will be published in May, 2010.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
