Randy Susan Meyers's Blog, page 43

My Amazing Jewish Book Fair Ride

[image error] "Don't forget; Jewish people read an enormous amount," my lovely (and Jewish) literary agent said before my book launch. "We really love books."

I nodded. Yes, I knew that—at least I knew it inasmuch as I was Jewish and I read—as did my mother, my sister, and my daughters, but could I raise that sample to the status of landslide? Discerning what was true in my culture was fraught with difficulty. I grew up with a slight case of anomie, surrounded by a cultural belief that all-things-Jewish=equals families-pushing-one-towards-great-achievement, while, among other family oddities, my grandmother taught me to shoplift.

I was unclear what being Jewish meant or if I belonged.

Then, this November, I had the great good fortune of being invited to participate in Jewish Book Festival and finally felt the full impact of being welcomed into the larger Jewish community.

Jewish Book Month, according to the overseeing Jewish Book Council is "an annual event on the American Jewish calendar dedicated to the celebration of Jewish books. It is observed during the month proceeding Hanukkah, thus the exact date changes from year to year."

For writers, this translates to: if you're a Jewish author, or wrote a Jewish-themed book, you can participate in a massive authorial version of American Idol. Call it Jewish Writer Idol, only rather than one winner, there are many, and the chosen ones speak at some number of the over 100 Jewish Book Festivals. If you scale the steps (applications, sending books, etc) you earn the right to sit in Hebrew Union College, crowded thigh-to-thigh in a roomful of other authors, seated before representatives of the various festivals. You'll have 2 short (or, in some cases, seemingly endless) minutes to convince the audience to pick your book. The not-thanked-enough audience sits through endless afternoon and evening sessions, until the books must merge into one giant mybookillustrateswithdepthandcaring.

Afterward, the audience returns home to read boxes of books before the picks are chosen, traded, and who-knows-what. (I actually know almost nothing about what goes on behind the closed doors—but I imagine it as a giant book debate, perhaps like a continent-wide game of Monopoly.)

Meanwhile, I experienced the nerd equivalent of Rush Week, waiting to see if I got any invitations; then becoming totally Sally Field when they arrived: They liked me! They really liked me!

And then I flew around the country. How to describe the feeling of walking into these Jewish Community Centers filled with readers eager to hear from you? I felt as though I were finally meeting every aunt, uncle, and cousin I'd ever wished for.

Warmth and love was present everywhere: In Columbus, Ohio I had the pleasure of pairing up with local anti-domestic violence groups (based on themes in my novel) and within the event, moving from discussing my book to considering best practices for prevention. The JCC bookstore was heaped with books I wanted to read. Pure gold. (Plus I got to have dinner with my much-admired online author friend Carla Buckley.)

Unless I'm kidding myself, I made friends for life. Detroit knocked me over. I walked into their "Book Club Night" to be greeted by over 300 men and women. Somehow, in this large insightful crowd, we became an intimate group of friends discussing details of writing and life. (It's also where I gushingly embarrassed myself by sharing with my 300 personal friends my admiration of the upcoming author Darin Strauss.

I'm still red-faced. Moral of story: 300 people do not hold secrets.

The world can be mighty small for a minority: I learned that playing Jewish geography in San Diego. Along with being spellbound by how enraptured they were with books, I discovered connections to high school, camp, college, and most important—to the Jewish Federation of Philanthropy, who saved my life as a child. I had the thrill of seeing that they nurtured authors from both large and small presses, such as my friend Ellen Meeropol, a Red Hen author. It was also here that I finally met Lois Alter Mark in person, who introduced me to Miriam Mendoza's sad and yet emboldening story of her family's encounter with domestic homicide.

Have I mentioned food? I flew at 6 AM from San Diego to St. Louis. There the joy of presentation and forming a mutual admiration society with co-panelist, author Alyson Richman (whose book gripped me the entire flight home) mingled with a hospitality that still warms me today. Local children's author, Jody Feldman saved my life with coffee and caring when she greeted me (inside!) at the airport. The next morning, Alyson, the moderator, Ellen Futterman, editor of the St. Louis Jewish Light, and I, were treated to breakfast and an opportunity to meet each other before our event.  After the incredibly well-attended and joyous morning (with Alyson and I now firmly in love) we were taken out to a magnificent multi-course lunch.

By now, I was considering moving to the Midwest.

The food theme continued in Virginia Beach. A tower of desserts gilded the Book Club Night. Seated in a stuffed armed chair, I spoke with a group of women and men who'd not only read my book, but came armed with deeply moving questions and consideration. Again paired with a local domestic violence group—and again I was struck by community connections, dedication to helping, and the commitment to books and life-long learning. I was picked up for the event by a woman filled with the spirit of generosity and family, and driven back to my hotel by her mother—a woman who dedicated part of her retirement to teaching children to read

Back home, I got a few snappish reactions from non-Jewish writer friends, usually along the lines of, "Why isn't there a Wasp book festival?" (I bit my tongue against saying: There is. It's called life,) put off by the exclusionary nature of the events. To me, it's a way for a tiny percentage (.02 %) of the world, a percentage sharply cut by the Holocaust, to celebrate how despite a history of oppression and anti-semitism, we became strong at the broken places—and are diverse enough to include those as different as Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, an advocate for peace in the face of devastating personal tragedy, Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, and Rabbi Andrea Myers, once a Lutheran, now a member of the New York Board of Rabbis, as well as a lesbian who was active in New York's fight to recognize gay marriage, in the celebration.

Every community I visited brought remembrance of the past and hopeful embrace of the future. On a personal level, they provided not only an opportunity to talk about my book, but my anomie is greatly ameliorated. Being Jewish means a host of things—including ensuring provision of a big tent. I was invited, I felt cherished, and I belonged.

And, as my agent wisely said: Jewish people really love books.

Behind Closed Doors: A Boy's Wisdom

[image error]"The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. " Socrates (with dispute about attribution.)

Sometimes you get lucky and you realize (in the midst of worrying about war, famine, and the economy) that Socrates is still quite wrong. Hope enters.

Recently I went to my cousin's son's Bar Mitzvah. For those unfamiliar with the ritual, tucked inside the prayer, and the readings is the D'Var Torah. It is here that the bat mitzvah girl or bar mitzvah boy interprets a portion of the Torah, giving their personal sermon.

The bar mitzvah came while I was in the midst of speaking at Jewish Book Festivals about my novel, The Murderer's Daughters, and family violence, stressing how this private act can be so at odds from one's public persona. How many times have we all read about a neighbor saying, "but he seemed like the best guy in the world!" after a man murdered his wife?

We wrestle with demons. Below the surface, who doesn't have malevolent words waiting to bubble up? With batterers, these moments boil over behind closed doors. They claim it's because they can't control themselves, because they have 'buttons' that are pushed, when, in truth, it's because they are choosing not to control themselves.

Most of us have yelled at, been nasty to, and spread our moods more on our family then we'd ever dare with our bosses—not because we love our boss more, or because our boss never angers us. It's because we have control, and we choose when to use it.

Too often, we choose not to use it at home.

Which brings me to my young cousin. After talking myself hoarse, perhaps a bit too proud of my speechifying, my cousin's D'Var Torah stunned me. At thirteen, speaking simpler and clearer than I ever did, he showed that he understood exactly what 'behind closed doors' means:

"Shabbat Shalom. When I read through my Vayera portion, the parts that peaked my interest involved Abraham and Lot's actions regarding their family members.  It seemed that these biblical figures were more concerned with the lives of strangers than with the well-being of their family members.

When G-d is ready to destroy Sodom, Abraham tries to persuade G-d to save the inhabitants, saying 'what if there should be fifty innocent in the city; will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it?'

Compare that with Abraham's actions in Chapter 22, when Abraham offers his son as commanded by G-d.  Abraham puts Isaac on the altar. He's ready to kill him. He doesn't try to persuade G-d to save his son.

Abraham argues with G-d to save the lives of strangers in Sodom, but does not question G-d's command to sacrifice his own son.

Abraham is not the only biblical figure prepared to sacrifice family members. In Chapter 19, two angels, disguised as strangers, go to the city of Sodom to warn Lot to leave before it is destroyed. However, they are met by angry townspeople who circle the house and plan to harm these strangers. Lot offers his daughters to the townspeople in exchange for the stranger's safety, saying, 'let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please; but do not do anything to these men, since they have come under the shelter of my roof.'

That's a disturbing way to treat your daughters.  The commentary to that verse notes that this is part of a system where 'a patriarch possessed absolute power over the members of his clan….' Lot could basically do anything to his family members.  Daughters were not valued at that time.  However, there is a big difference between not valuing a daughter as much as a son, and offering her to an angry crowd in exchange for the safety of strangers.

In both cases, leaders try to protect strangers, while ready to sacrifice members of their family without a fight.  It reminds me of politicians and other public figures who appear to work hard to help the people they serve, but don't seem to be good to their families. It surprises me that someone who is a public leader would not necessarily treat his or her family well.  Isn't your family made up of the people who are most important to you? What makes it hard to treat your family the way you treat others?

Maybe the person who is famous is used to getting attention and praise for what they do in public, but at home they're just another member of the family, and do not receive such praise.  It raises the issue of how someone behaves in public, versus how they behave in private with their family.  Everyone, not just famous people, acts differently in public than they do privately.  I am no exception.

My sister and I get into daily, if not hourly fights about everything from who walks the dog, to who empties the dishwasher, to who gets to use the computer.  However, when we are together in public, we try to act more mature and civilized towards each other.  Maybe when there are other people around, their presence makes you act in a more polite fashion.  However, behind closed doors, with people you live with, the barriers fall, and we feel more comfortable around each other and express what we are feeling.

My dad is also no exception. Growing up he shared a room with his twin brother, my Uncle Richard, and there were apparently no boundaries on how they spoke with and treated each other. Just ask my grandmother.  At college my father learned to bite his tongue and not share every feeling with that roommate.

I wonder whether we all get too comfortable with our loved ones. Even though we wouldn't do what Abraham and Lot did, we don't always treat our family the way we should.

We certainly wouldn't hurt our family members, or knowingly expose them to harm, but that does not mean that we always treat them properly.  Maybe sometimes we need to treat family like strangers, in terms of the respect that we give them.  We have to watch what we do privately, and how we treat each other behind closed doors.  We should treat our families the same whether people are looking or not." (David Isaacs, age 13, November 2011.)

At Bar Mitzvah, a boy is supposed to become a young man, with moral awareness and sensitivity, able to take responsibility for his actions. It is when a young man can analyze and interpret, not just memorize, biblical stories. It is when a boy, among many other signs of maturity, realizes the consequence of his actions.

Mazel tov, David.  You are there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DIAMOND RUBY (I already want to re-read it)

[image error]The only thing I didn't love about Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace was finishing it, because then it was over and I had to leave her world. Lucky you, you can still look forward to it.

If you want the perfect book to give to a young, old, or in-between female this holiday, get Diamond Ruby. (And then you're going to want to pass it on, so you may want to buy an extra. I've already gone through a few.)

I don't want to give much away, but I'll say this: Joseph Wallace's inspiration for his book was Jackie Mitchell, who was signed (in 1931) to an all male-team in an all male baseball league in Tennessee. She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. A few days later, the baseball commissioner banned her (and all women) from the league on the grounds that the sport was "too strenuous" for women.

Diamond Ruby begins in 1913 Brooklyn, when Ruby Thomas is seven, and then shoots us into 1920's New York in a manner which, for me, captured the danger and wildness of that era in a way I've never experienced. Ruby's story is half fairy-tale, and half knuckle-biting suspense (there were times towards the end when my stomach did actual flip-flops.) This book never lectures, but it teaches, in the best way, about the world girls lived in before the doors of opportunity creaked open.

This story drew me in, then captured me and then rocketed to an intense 'gotta know.' Finally, in my best Brooklyn 'fuggeda bout it' I put everything away until I finished the story. This is the book I'm forcing into my daughter's, sister's, cousins, and friend's hands. You can share it with your 14-year-old daughter and your 84 year-old Grandma, and even though I guess it's a baseball story, neither of them has to care a fig about baseball (I don't—although now I may start.)

Truth in posting: I am not a sports fan, but I am a rabid fan of sports movies, from Slapshot to Any Given Sunday (something my husband still finds baffling—he who can't get me to watch even three minutes of football.) I am not usually a YA fan (not that I think this is even vaguely a YA book, but some might try to box it and thus push it out of sight) though A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is my most beloved book.

Diamond Ruby may be A Tree Grows In Brooklyn meets Any Given Sunday.

The author, Joe Wallace, a friend from Twitter and Facebook, wrote a post for this blog on Monday. He wrote about the courage it took to write in a female voice (a child and teenager's female voice.) Joe, you did the voice proud.

This is a book I wished I'd never read, so I could still look forward to reading it. This is a book I wish I'd had when I was 13-years-old. This is a book that was a perfect read for me right now.

You're so lucky to have it in front of you.

The Year Google (and Goya) Saved Thanksgiving

 

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I don't care how many writers shed tears for the good old days, before we were so connected, before life sped before our tapping fingers: Web, thee did save me.

My sister and I may not have grown up rife with traditions–when when Jill and I hung our socks on Christmas eve, the flat unfilled sight of them the next morning may have reminded us that Santa didn't stop for little Jewish girls–but darn it, we had the stuffing handed down from Grandma Millie. If we were on death row, our last meal would be the stuffing.

You could tweak it (Jill uses garlic, I don't) but you never messed with the main ingredients: Uneeda Biscuits and stale rolls. The stale rolls might change from year to year—we're flexible. Recently I've discovered that Bertucci's rolls are perfect and we make sure to stop by the restaurant where our take out order is, um, 2 bags of rolls.

But don't mess with the Uneeda biscuits.

In recent years, Thanksgiving became a little scary. The weeks before the hallowed meal I became obsessed with finding the suddenly difficult to find blue cardboard crackers boxes decorated with the little boy in the raincoat. Year round, the entire family went on the lookout for these increasingly rare crackers. What was going on with Nabisco?

One year I was able to order them from Amazon. Then not. Finally, I discovered that DeLuca's Market in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston stocked them (I think for nearby frail ladies in their nineties who crumbled them in their Campbell's.) For years, I'd drive down and clean them out, sometimes, when only 4 or 5 boxes remained. I'd shudder, knowing how close I'd come to a Uneeda-less year.

A year ago, when we were already dangerously close to Thanksgiving, they seemed to have disappeared. My older daughter swore she'd seen them in a Market Basket in a suburb 40 minutes from our house. My husband and I raced over. We scoured the aisles. I called my daughter—oh, had she forgotten to mention the sighting had been months before? We drove to DeLuca's, (surely they'd re-stocked) thinking it an auger of success when we found a parking spot in front (a Beacon Hill miracle.)

Nothing.

A wonderful clerk went to the order form.

Nothing. No longer being ordered.

Nauseated by fear, I went home to, of course, Google Uneeda Biscuits. Where I learned, on Chowhound (my new best friend) that it was over. They were gone. Discontinued. Kaput.

But, oh Lordy, it turned out that Grandma Millie's secret ingredient was known by others. OMG! We were not the only family in America using Uneeda Biscuits for stuffing. We were not the only family in America for whom Uneeda Biscuits were the cure for stomach aches, depression, and holidays.

We were not alone.

But wait; there's more. The miracle of Thanksgiving unfolded on my screen. Others, secret byte-sized friends, had already attacked the problem: Goya Snack Crackers. They weren't a clone or a complete match, but, as my savior,Bicycle Chick wrote, they are quite similar in flavor.

She was correct.

We were saved. Because when it comes to keeping tradition alive, sometimes you have to go online.

Happy Thanksgiving to friends of all dimensions.

Five Facts About That Bad Boy

[image error]Perhaps the lure of the bad boy is similar to the lure of climbing Mt. Everest. It feels so good to conquer it and get to the top—despite all the pain you felt on the ascent. Unfortunately, you have to climb down and start all over again to get back up to that thrilling peak.

Working with batterers for almost ten years afforded me plenty of material and plenty of insight. The clearest and most useful lesson I learned was this: a 'bad boy' isn't edgy, exciting, and a bag of fun, he's mean and selfish and looking out for number one—himself—all the time.

Many of the batterers were classic bad boys; they could charm like no one else. They gave me smoldering glances so I'd know that I was the only one in the entire world who they'd let inside their soul. When they didn't have money to pay for classes, or had been picked up on a new charge, or failed a drug test, they'd look at me with their carefully tortured eyes and tell me how sorry they were.

They really were sorry. Sorry they'd been caught and sorry they had to spend another night pretending to pay attention to this crap we were teaching.

At their core, these guys weren't very different from the bad boys I'd once been drawn to. But never again, not after working that job. I wish I could share with every woman the experience of sitting in a circle with 15 court-ordered-to-be-there bad boys, because at some point during the 42 weeks they occupied that chair in the church basement, they let loose with some truth that revealed the dime a dozen ordinariness of bad boy behavior.

So, while I can't put you in that room, I can try to share with you what I learned there:

1) When you and your bad boy get in that insane fight, and you don't know how it began, why it happened, or why he stormed out the door . . . when you're ready to follow him so you can beg his forgiveness—but you don't have any idea what to apologize for—here's what's really going on:

He wanted to get out of the house. So he caused the fight. The men admitted it. This sleazy little tactic is dime-a-dozen common.

2) Which leads to this: What did most men admit they wanted to get out of the truly awful battles? You know, the ones where he yelled so loud you finally backed down?

If Jeopardy could have more realistic categories, the response to "most common thing men want women to do during a fight?" would be "Alex, what is "shut the f*** up.

3) Think this when he tells you "you're the only one I've ever been able to talk to." Yeah, right. First of all he's probably said the same thing to 100 other women before you. Because he knows it's like catnip.  The men I worked with were very clear that they used this line only to manipulate.

4) When he says, "I can't live without you," here's a news flash. He can. And he will. Quite well. The question is, can you live with him? Do you want to? Do you like being kept off balance? Do you treasure being used like medicine for someone's lack of self-confidence or need to control?

5) You want to believe it will change. Things will get better. If you explain it once more, write one more email, one more letter, or cry one more time, then finally he will understand! And once he understands, those moments of incredible tenderness and bliss —when he gives you that crooked smile and takes you in his arms and then gently helps you onto his exciting motorcycle—will last forever.

I promise you, things will not change. He will not get better. There's nothing you can do unless he wants to change. Nothing. The cycle will continue as long as you let it.

So here's my advice, as a mother, a sister, a friend and most of all, from a woman who worked with those bad boys:

Choose kind over thrilling. It wears much better.

Choose responsible over devil-may-care. It will keep you and your children warm and safe at night.

Choose a man who wants to be your friend, not one who will be your life-long home improvement project.

Food and Loathing and Hamper Cookies

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Everyone hates a fat woman. Or is it that a fat woman thinks everyone hates her? Or does a fat woman simply hate herself?

As someone who's measured her worth in dress sizes, waistbands, and, when in the midst of bravery, the hard-core truth of pounds, I've felt all of the above. We are a harsh country, filled with both self-loathing and a Calvinist push towards walking off, dieting away, running away from, and when all else fails, surgically sucking out unwanted fat.

Do men suffer as women do? I'm not sure. I don't think so, not as much—not when fat men on screen are allowed to bed and wed women as lovely as Katherine Heigl. I think being fat is painful for men. I simply don't think they're as reviled; they need to climb far higher up the scale to merit as much hate as heavy women.

I recently re-read (even re-bought, when I couldn't find my copy) Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner. From far too young, Lerner's existence rested on her body size—real and perceived. The book begins thusly:

"It is 1972. I am twelve years old. It is the first day of sixth grade, and I am standing in the girls' gymnasium waiting to be weighed."

If your flesh doesn't crawl with those words, if you don't want to either go running for a cream cheese smothered bagel, or conversely, vow to stop eating as of tomorrow, this book will still interest you, but you may not swallow it whole.

The hatred of our flesh often has no bearing in reality. One of my best friends in the world begins each day pinching her flesh with callipered fingers and living for her daily-rationed cookie. She is tight and muscled and yet lives each day as though a sorcerer might drop fifty pounds on her at any moment.

Do I understand this?

I do.

I grew up with a thin mother who lived for leanness and beauty. My sister's body mirrored hers. To the day she died at eighty, my mother would ask, "how's your weight" each time we spoke, as though my 'weight' was a living-breathing entity separate from that which she liked about me.

I sloughed her words off with sarcasm and sighs, still my life was frozen in moments: My mother hiding cookies in a pot on the top of the cabinets. (I got exercise climbing up.) Swiping the icing from the middle of the Entenmanns, until the cake became thinner and thinner (but not me.)

I remember the horror of looking for a dress for my cousin's Bar Mitzvah as my mother rolled her eyes and complained to the sales women about her disgust at the lack of gowns into which I could zip. Last week I had to search for old family photos for an article. While doing so, I came across a picture of me at the Bar Mitzvah, wearing the gown.

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This was the 'me' that wanted to die from being so fat. I can't believe I suffered as I did. Of course, I also found pictures where I really was plump. But deserving of loathing?

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Of course, that's a mildly plump picture. Even now, it's hard to put the real ones up.

We're hated, we hate ourselves, and we learn to sneak our food. I devoured cookies that I hid in the bathroom hamper.

Betsy Lerner joined Overeaters Anonymous in junior high, where she learned to divide food into forbidden and good. She became a compulsive eater or a compulsive dieter, depending on the day, the month, and the moment. When binging, real life was always a day away. When dieting, she considered herself abstinent—except that sex became her comfort.

Mixed in for Lerner, was her struggle with depression and anxiety, finally ending up in a New York mental hospital after a suicide attempt, where, after years of being ill-treated by shrinks, she is diagnosed as bi-polar. This is presented neither as an answer to her relationship with food, nor as separate. It is part of her ongoing puzzle.

Food and Loathing is not a self-help book; it's no guide for losing weight. Nor is it a companionable hug for staying heavy. It's a mirror. It's looking back, looking forward, or looking at who you are right this moment.

After finishing it, I thought (not for the first time, not for the last) about how much space I want to rent in my head to the mirror and to the scale. Right now, at this moment, month, minute, I am sorta-okay, and that's probably okay. I think that perhaps, sorta-okay is as good as it gets with acceptance for some of us.

Yeah, when you grow up with hamper cookies and sighs, getting to sorta-okay when you look in the mirror can be a damned miracle.

That's what I loved about Food and Loathing. Betsy Lerner tells that particular story very well.

(from the re-run collection.)

Break-Your-Heart Books

Write a book that breaks your own heart. That's one of the reminders I wrote myself before outlining my novel. (The other was don't rescue your characters—a reminder not to fall so in love with them that I couldn't bear having them in pain.

Whether or not a book digs deep and delivers the bones of an author's truth—through memoirs revealing facts or novels delivering emotional authenticity—is apparent upon the reading. These are the books that pop me in the heart or provide moment of reality mirrored back.

I thought about this when I read Darin Strauss's memoir, Half A Life, which explores his examination of living with the guilt of having accidently killed a high school classmate in a driving accident. Strauss goes that extra step, providing the squirmy details that take us into his experience and have us reflect on our own:

The accident had also turned me squishily obliging. I always cozied up to people—so that if they ever learned the story they'd say: "He seems so decent and kind. How awful that such a thing would happen to him!

Jesse, A Mother's Story was written by Marianne Leone, a mother who loved her son with ferocity—the ferocity parents of disabled children need more than others parents. Jesse Cooper had severe cerebral palsy, was unable to speak, and was quadriplegic and wracked by severe seizures. He was also stunningly bright, funny, and loving. His parents, Marianne Leone and Chris Cooper, needed both rage and ferocious love if Jesse's light was to come out in full.

Leone wrote her book so close that I felt the cigarette she held as I read how she:

Our session with the physical therapist was a disaster. She roughly stripped Jesse of his outside clothes, and he began to howl. "Well, I can't work with him if he's going to cry all the time," she said . . . Jesse was failing physical therapy. Or was the therapist failing Jesse? To watch your child handled roughly is to have a piece of your soul crumple into ash.



In the opening of Tayari Jones' novel Silver Sparrow the narrator's direct candor took me deep faster than any string of fancified words could:

My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist. He was already married ten years when he first clamped eyes on my mother. In 1968, she was working at the gift-wrap counter at Davison's downtown when my father asked her to wrap the carving knife he had bought his wife for their wedding anniversary. Mother said she knew that something wasn't right between a man and woman when the gift was a blade. I said that maybe it means there was a kind of trust between them.

Right from the start I knew I was getting truth straight up.

Truthiness in books delivers windows on the world that help us understand; it also delivers those oh-so-important I'm not alone moments which get can get you through everyday pain—and isn't it the everyday pain that often breaks our hearts? Jennifer Weiner's Good In Bed explores the aftermath of a young woman reading her ex's description of her in a national magazine, a dramatization of how so many of us fear being called out for being fat:

I could hear the blood roaring in my ears as I read the first line of the article: "I'll never forget the day I found out my girlfriend weighed more than I did . . . I never thought of myself as a chubby chaser"' I read.

Dani Shapiro's memoir Slow Motion provides understanding of the ways in which a complicated childhood can lead to a self-loathing-inducing affair (hers only struck down because of a family tragedy.)

I cannot face dinner with Lenny without a vial of cocaine in my handbag. My friend buzzed me in, and I run five flights up to her loft, skimming my hand along the chipped wood banister. I ring her doorbell, and she opens it, holding a paper bag. I know what will be inside without even looking, and I hand her a check for one hundred dollars. She trusts me and always takes my checks—a nifty trait in a drug dealer.



Depth of truth is not limited to particular genres—it resonates from the author's willingness to reveal the squirmy details, the inside-thoughts, and the unheroic. It can be exposed with humor, straight on, or with chilling particulars (though self-pity generally sinks the impact of candor.)

Writing and reading books that hit the bone isn't to everyone's taste (some have told me my book is too dark,) but they help me. Even as a kid, I was never one for the happily-ever-after. Opening my eyes to the wounds of others helps me understand my own transgressions and spreads an empathy that balms my tender spots. Other times, I am given the gift of appreciating what I haven't had to endure.

Writing towards the worst makes me braver—a trait I dearly need to employ more often. In my family, my sister and I are known for doing our 'death watches'—always waiting for people to disappear and disaster to strike. Reading and writing about the dark side seems to be one of the ways in which I can lighten up.

Lord knows it's better than whiskey,

Books That Haunt

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Books That Haunt

Halloween is all about haunting. The unrelenting hold of ghosts. The unbearable-to-resist sweetness of candy.

Ghosts that haunt are products of the living: relatives dead and alive, past loves, remembered slights, pinnacles of success, things we wish we'd never done, things we wish we had done. Jobs we wisely quit. Careers we never pursued. Decisions that changed our lives, broke our hearts, made us soar with delight.

And the books that haunt. The truest readers probably measure their life in books. Oh, that was when I read  . . .

Books that haunt aren't necessarily the best (though often they are) or the scariest (though sometimes they are) but the books that follow us forever. The characters become part of your mind's family. The story admonishes you to be a better person. Or warns you against letting up your guard. Or makes you wish for a life just like that.

Below are a few of my haunting books (rules: chose on memory alone: no Googling to remember anything but author's name, no perusing bookshelves, and no calling sister Jill for hints.)

1) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Thanks to Mr. Capote, I will never sleep in a country home alone. Never.

2) A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith. A comfort to this Brooklyn-born girl, read until it fell apart.

3) The Family That Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss. Another childhood soother—made me want to grow up and adopt the world. Made me fantasize that I would be adopted (despite having parents.)

4) The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham. A recent haunting—the truthiest (thank you Becky Tuch) book I've read in a long time.

5) Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux. Coping with the horror of bad parents in the worst of places.

6) Growing up Rich by Anne Bernays. Orphaned rich girl suddenly in middle class home—am I seeing a theme here? Re-read recently after a million years. It held up.

7) Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty. Is there a scarier book? More gripping. More story-that-won't-quit. Who can ever forget 'Blue Duck?'

[image error] Crazy Time by Abigail Trafford. Because it got me though a divorce. 

9) Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner. Oh yes, that relationship.

10) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I count the years until I can re-read this one yet again.

Which books haunt you?

Fasting Against the Violence at Home

[image error]I've worked with men who battered their wives, their girlfriends, their sisters, and sometimes their mothers. For almost ten years, I listened to their stories as they admitted bullying, hitting, smacking, punching, and breaking bones. Some had murdered.

When asked where their children were during these incidents, almost all answered the same way: they were sleeping.

Children do not sleep through these traumatic moments. Some freeze. Some bury the horror so deep it can't be accessed. Some become stuck on the road of re-creating the incident in their own lives (like so many of my clients had.)

The lucky children-witnesses become strong at the broken places, and as adults are teachers, nurses, law enforcement; they are all over the helping professions.

October is Domestic Violence Month and during that time, it's important to think of the children who watch as their parents raise fists to each other, to them, and to strangers.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, in 2001–2005, children were present in 216,490 (35.2 percent) households experiencing Intimate Partner Violence.

Yet, when researching my novel, The Murderer's Daughters, I found only one book about how children were affected when their father murdered their mother:

"Since the killings occur in the context of family life, all routines familiar to the children disappear forthwith . . . we have shared with children their horror at realizing that their dead mother's body was concealed in a garage or had been taken from the house and hidden… One family of three children were taken to school unwittingly with their mother's body wrapped in plastic dustbin liners in the boot of the car."

When Father Kills Mother: Guiding Children Through Trauma and Grief by Jean Harris-Hendriks, Dora Black and Tony Kaplan.

During my many years working with batterers, the men in my groups swore that their children slept while they assaulted their children's mothers.

Children do not sleep through their parent's screaming matches.

I believe that we don't want to accept as true that children see and feel the violence around us. I believe there is a strange sort of cognitive dissonance in the country that allows us to believe that children can watch bloody homicides on television, can feel the sting of a mother or father's hand slapping them, can listen to violence against women being sung on the radio, can even watch their fathers beat their mothers–and somehow remain innocent.

Children witness 87% of the domestic violence assaults in this country.

Children do not lie dreaming as their mother is beaten.

Children in violent homes are the abuse targets at a 1500% higher rate than the national average.

Children huddle in terror.

Perhaps, even though Yom Kippur, The Day Of Atonement, has passed, instead of fasting by giving up food, we can, in one huge ecumenical move, fast against all violence, and raise our children in peace.

(originally published in October 2010)

A Mentor Never Meet: When Writers Provide Comfort

I got sick of reading the same old story, told by Jewish writers, of the same old stereotypes — the possessive mothers, the worn-out fathers, all the rest of the neurotic rebellious unhappy self-hating tribe," she said. "I wanted to write a different novel about Jews — and a truer one." Thus was Belva Plain quoted in her New York Times obituary, a year ago on October 12, 2010.

"In the beginning there was a warm room with a table, a black iron stove and red flowered wallpaper."

That's the first line of Belva Plain's first book. In a prescient review, Library Journal wrote of Evergreen: "A magnificent story…this beautifully written book will be treasured and reread for many years to come."

I read Evergreen as I did most books in 1978—for the luxury of escape, seeking solace in a world that wasn't mine, my world being defined by a two-year-old, a five- year-old, and a marriage chosen at 19, when I was in love and desperate for perceived safety.

Belva Plain's books comforted me then and her life story has comforted me ever since. Each birthday that another year passed without publishing a novel, each year that writing gave way to raising children and working, I'd think of Belva Plain publishing her first novel at 59. She'd sold short stories in her twenties, but broke from writing as she raised her family.

I'd co-authored a nonfiction book in my twenties, and then became lost in family and work, not realizing my dream until 2010, at 57, I published my novel The Murderer's Daughters.

Belva Plain was a guiding light. As I counted down the years, in a world where youth is treated as an achievement—the passing of youth as a tragedy—the presence of Belva Plain calmed me. For every time there is a season, I reminded myself. Ms. Plain was my example against the world's devaluation of middle-aged women.

Ms. Plain was a New York Times bestselling author. Her rich reads offered millions exactly what they wanted, stories thick with family, troubles, and a pastiche of the tough times face by many women. Called "an accomplished storyteller," by the Washington Post and described by the San Francisco Chronicle as writing with "authority and integrity," Belva Plain also built a wonderful life.

From within her happiness—a long loving marriage, beloved by and close to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—Ms. Plain was able to touch the ways women stay strong in the face of the disasters they faced in their homes, in their communities, and in the world.

Belva Plain provided succor and transport in her stories and a breath-taking role model with her life. She is missed; her mark is strong.

After publishing her first novels at the age of 59, in 1978, Belva Plain went on to publish 22 more, her final book coming out in 2004, when she was 84. She was a remarkable woman and the very best guide one could have to getting older.