Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret | Tenderloin

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret
A talk and reading by Steve Luxenberg
Thursday, March 4, 7:30 pm
Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Parade magazine, and named it as one of Best Books of 2009 by The Washington Post

Part memoir, part detective story, part history, Annie’s Ghosts explores the nature of self-deception and self-preservation as it untangles one family’s long-protected silence.

Steve Luxenberg’s mother and aunt grew up together, but from age 21, his aunt Annie lived in a mental institution, and his mother spent the rest of her life hiding her sibling’s existence. Struggling to maintain his empathy as a son, Luxenberg employed his skills as a journalist to piece together the story of his aunt’s unknown life, his mother’s motivations, and the times in which they lived. His investigation turns into a journey through Imperial Russia and Depression-era Detroit, the Holocaust in the Ukraine and the Philippine war zone, and back to the hospitals where Annie and many others were lost to memory.

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