Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret [Kindle Edition] Author: Steve Luxenberg | Language: English | ISBN:
B002EBDPHI | Format: PDF, EPUB
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One of the Washington Post Book World's "Best Books of 2009," Memoir
Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Or so everyone thought. Six months after Beth's death, her secret emerged. It had a name: Annie. Direct download links available for Download Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret
- File Size: 1307 KB
- Print Length: 428 pages
- Publisher: Hyperion (May 5, 2009)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002EBDPHI
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,388 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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At what point do you stop controlling a secret and find that it is controlling you? That's one of the questions at the heart of Steve Luxenberg's utterly compelling first book, "Annie's Ghosts" Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret. Part memoir, part biography and part investigative reporting, this book humanizes a subject that probably touches more of us than we might realize.
Luxenberg's journey begins as a son's quest to learn why his mother turned her sibling from younger sister to lifelong secret and expands to become an exploration of a particularly moving era in recent American history.
Several months after Luxenberg's mom died, the cemetery where her parents were buried sent the family a letter containing a simple question that was to lead Luxenberg and his siblings on a journey through their family's past. "Spring was around the corner," Luxenberg writes, "and the cemetery was offering to plant flowers on the grave sites." The solicitation wasn't for two sites, however, but for three. Suddenly, this whisper of a woman had a name, Annie. Her burial certificate answered some questions, but led to others that took Luxenberg deep into the dynamics of his own family as well as the evolving nature of health care in the United States during several key decades of the 20th century.
He soon found himself part of a wave of thousands of family members seeking information about relatives who'd been institutionalized--relatives they'd never known they had. "I couldn't write about all the `forgotten people,' but I could write about one," Luxenberg writes of his decision to ferret out Annie's tale.
The subject matter here is fascinating: the stuff of Hollywood films or interesting novels.
After his mother's death (and not from a "deathbed confession" as the book's current blurb claims), journalist Steve Luxenberg learns something startling -- He has an aunt.
Or rather, had.
A letter from a cemetery asking about routine maintenance for a grave helps Steve begin to coax this particular family skeleton out of the closet. See, his mother's sister, Annie, was institutionalized. And as much as Steve might try to justify the obvious shame and embarrassment (even hatred? resentment?) that his mother felt, his difficulties in rationalization increase when he discovers this wasn't some sister his mom barely knew, socked away as a child, or dying young -- Annie was institutionalized when Steve's mother was in her early 20s. His mother had spent a significant portion of her life living with Annie, and Annie didn't die young. She lived into her 50s. She must have been a fixture around the neighborhood. How had his mother kept this secret all these years, and why?
A journalist by trade, Steve begins investigating his own family history, immediately discovering the difficulties that even the state throws in the way of those who would like to learn more about its former wards. As Steve struggles to obtain records and interview family and friends, some of whom are dying before he can speak to them, the reader is along for an exciting ride. Steve's careful research on the institution Eloise, Annie's contemporaries' views on mental illness, and how a physical handicap (malformed leg) might have affected Annie, absolutely shine.
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