After Long Silence

“Fascinating . . . A tragic saga, but at the same time it often reads like a thriller filled with acts of extraordinary courage, descriptions of dangerous journeys and a series of secret identities.”—Chicago Tribune “To this day, I don't even know what my mother's real name is.” Helen Fremont was raised as a Roman Catholic. It wasn't until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish—Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth. Driven to uncover their roots, Fremont and her sister pieced together an astonishing story: of Siberian Gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. After Long Silence is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets. Praise for After Long Silence “Poignant . . . affecting . . . part detective story, part literary memoir, part imagined past.”—The New York Times Book Review “Riveting . . . painfully authentic . . . a poignant memoir, a labor of love for the parents she never really knew.”—The Boston Globe “Mesmerizing . . . Fremont has accomplished something that seems close to impossible. She has made a fresh and worthy contribution to the vast literature of the Holocaust.”—The Washington Post Book World

The Presences mean something different to each of Jubal's colonists. In some, these towering crystals inspire awe, in others fear. A small band must break through the long silence between humanity and the Presences to strike a new alliance-and bring about the end of a tyrannical dynasty.

The author recounts his extraordinary activities as a student at Cambridge, a Communist, a speech writer for Franklin Roosevelt, and a McCarthy-fighting editor, and reveals his links to the Philby-Blunt spy ring

Jay'S Life Comes Apart At The Seams When Her Husband Is Asked To Leave His Job While Allegations Of Business Malpractice Against Him Are Investigated. Her Familiar Existence Disrupted, Her Husband'S Reputation In Question And Their Future As A Family In Jeopardy, Jaya, A Failed Writer, Is Haunted By Memories Of The Past. Differences With Her Husband, Frustrations In Their Seventeen-Year-Old Marriage, Disappointment In Her Two Teenage Children, The Claustrophia Of Her Childhood&Amp;Mdash;All Begin To Surface. In Her Small Suburban Bombay Flat, Jaya Grapples With These And Other Truths About Herself&Amp;Mdash;Among Them Her Failure At Writing And Her Fear Of Anger. Shashi Deshpande Gives Us An Exceptionally Accomplished Portrayal Of A Woman Trying To Erase A 'Long Silence' Begun In Childhood And Rooted In Herself And In The Constraints Of Her Life.

A luminous new memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller After Long Silence, The Escape Artist has been lauded by New York Times bestselling author Mary Karr as “beautifully written, honest, and psychologically astute. A must-read.” In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world. Fremont delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her father’s will. In scenes that are frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny, She writes about growing up in such an intemperate household, with parents who pretended to be Catholics but were really Jews—and survivors of Nazi-occupied Poland. She shares tales of family therapy sessions, disordered eating, her sister’s frequently unhinged meltdowns, and her own romantic misadventures as she tries to sort out her sexual identity. Searching, poignant, and ultimately redemptive, The Escape Artist is a powerful contribution to the memoir shelf.

In a compilation of thirty-three essays, the author reflects on the world of angling as he shares his observations on his quarry, great fishing spots around the world, and fishing equipment.

In this strong, appealing collection, Nancy Willard shares her passion for observing the mysteries of the natural world, particularly the flora and fauna of Cape Cod and the Hudson Valley, where many of these poems are set. We see, through her eyes, the coming of darkness to an empty orchard, the retreat of deer at dusk, and the breakup of a river with the onset of spring. Willard is also deeply engaged with the living creatures that populate her world. Her poems record her encounter with a moon snail and her celebration of the ladybugs she sends into the garden and the butterflies that alight on her shoulders like ghostly kisses. Amid poems about the intimate presence of nature are expressions of absences deeply felt. Willard is drawn not just to the inhabited world but also to the empty spaces with which our passage through life is strewn. In “The Absence at the Swing,” a rabbit watches a swing’s back-and-forth motion just after the children have left the playground; in “Niche Without Statue,” she takes us to “an alcove scoured / to stucco light” and tells us, “Somebody lived here. Stepped away. No tracks.” We learn, too, of the presences she misses most deeply, as in “Phone Poem,” in which she imagines receiving a telephone call from her father after his death. Whether she is cultivating a sense of the life that is all around her or attending to the losses felt within, Nancy Willard never ceases to enchant us with the sense of dedication and awe that graces her verse.