Steve Luxenberg's Blog: About "Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret", page 5

The difficulty of researching family secrets

The first question I often hear when I tell someone that I’ve written a book about a family secret is usually this: “Can you tell me the secret?”

Sure, I say. After I do, the next question is invariably something like this: “Can I tell you my family secret?”

It’s a universal subject. During the past two years, while researching my book, I have heard dozens of other family secrets: Hidden marriages, hidden divorces, hidden affairs, hidden crimes. Our family histories are filled with such ghosts, and still, they fascinate us, hold us in their thrall. In part, that’s because most of us rarely know much beyond the secret itself. Often, we are desperate to understand the reasons for the secrecy, but we don’t know the facts, the motivations, circumstances and the pressures that compelled someone to choose deceit rather than honesty. Sometimes, the story is buried behind a veil of official secrecy; more likely, it is blocked by family pretense and silence.

I encountered both in researching and writing Annie’s Ghosts.

In the name of privacy, state laws make it extremely difficult for anyone but the most determined to obtain records or other information about a mentally ill relative, even one who has died long ago. These laws, I have concluded, go overboard in preventing family members from asking legitimate questions, particularly about genetically based diseases.

Family secrets and official secrecy: a powerful combination that has made it nearly impossible to tell the story of thousands of people who lived, largely alone, in the nation’s mental institutions until the early 1970s, their names lost to time and memory.

That's one of the many reasons why I wanted to write Annie's Ghosts.

I don’t believe that our lives should be lived as open books, for anyone to read. I opted to tell the full story in Annie’s Ghosts. But even as I did, I wondered whether my mom, who died in 1999, would have approved of my decision.

One very simple test: If keeping a secret brings you pain (as I believe it did to my mom), then let the secret go.

Your thoughts?

Annie's Ghosts: Introductions

I was surprised to find two ratings so far in advance of the May 5 publication of "Annie's Ghosts." Thanks to Cheryl and Susan for their early reads, and their kind evaluation. These reviewers have inspired me to begin this blog, and provide a bit more information about how I came to write the book.

Here's one way I describe it:

Two sisters, born two years apart to Jewish immigrants, grow up impoverished in Depression-era Detroit. One-—my mother, Beth—-escapes her parents’ walk-up apartment by marrying and moving away from the neighborhood that she equates with broken promises and broken lives.

The other sister? She was my mom's secret.

Employing my skills as a journalist while maintaining my empathy as a son, I pieced together the story of my mother’s motivations, my aunt’s unknown life, and the times in which they lived. The search took me to imperial Russia, across the Atlantic in steerage, to the streets of Detroit, to the Holocaust in Ukraine, through the Philippine war zone, and back to the public mental hospitals where Annie and many others have been lost to memory.

The story took me two years to research and write. I'm grateful to the many people who helped me with my quest, and I'm pleased that I was able to find enough information to tell this remarkable story.

I'm be back here over the next few months to write new posts. In the meantime, the book is available for pre-order on various online sites, and should be in bookstores around May 1.