Book Review – Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg

 

Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steven Luxenberg (Hyperion, 416pp, ISBN 9781401322472) is not your everyday family memoir. This poignant, memorable book will live in your thoughts long after it’s been returned to your book shelf. Annie’s Ghosts is a striking combination of family secrets, mental health issues in the forties and the entanglements of love, past and present.

The most astounding thing about Annie’s Ghosts? It’s true. The book begins after Steve’s mother’s death with a revelation of an aunt that neither Steve nor his siblings have ever heard of. In fact, his mother Beth had always taken great pains to tell newcomers to her immediate circle that she was an only child. Everyone who knew Beth knew she was, including her children. The reality was that Beth wasn’t.

The story unfolds Steve’s investigation into who this mystery aunt was and why his mother never had spoken of her all his life. He discovers that once, very close to the end of her life, Beth did talk about a disabled sister who was sent away at two years old. Beth mentioned it briefly, telling the doctor that was all she knew. It wasn’t.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Steve finds out she wasn’t two. She was almost twenty one and her name was Annie. The girls had grown up side by side, only two years apart in age. And his mother’s name wasn’t Beth. The more he probes, the more hidden knowledge is unveiled about his family’s background and the events surrounding Annie’s thirty one years of institutionalization.

Annie’s Ghosts is not a stab in the dark based on flights of the imagination. It is not comprised of hearsay and conjecture where every word spoken by any relative with the vaguest recall of Annie’s existence is treated as gospel truth. The author’s career choice of investigative journalism removed that possibility.

Author Steve Luxenberg has been a senior editor at The Washington Post for twenty two years. He’s been the guiding hand for teams that have won award after award, two of which were Pulitzer prizes for explanatory journalism. The investigation that is the essence of Annie’s Ghosts is methodical and thoughtful, with pieces of the puzzle gathered from places as diverse as Ukraine at the height of the Holocaust, Russia, Depression-riddled Detroit and the Philippine war zone.

How his mother managed to keep her secret for decades until she passed at almost eighty is incredible. Combining compassion and integrity that keeps it real, Steve Luxenberg’s thoughtful analysis of the information at hand shows a man who’s occasionally torn between the dual responsibilities of being a journalist and a son. His dogged determination to follow through on every lead, no matter how small, his moments of doubt as to how reliable what he hears really is and whether he should let sleeping dogs lie made me want to will him on and encourage him not to give up.

Steve takes nothing at face value and checks, crosschecks and rechecks the facts before assimilating the information to the best of his ability. More than once he runs into red tape and bureaucratic bungling – incomplete files, for example. That only delays his search but doesn’t deter it. His unswerving dedication to the pursuit of the truth is what makes Annie’s Ghosts such a compelling read. This book is far beyond what Steve mentions in his end notes as his vision for it – “part history, part journalism and part memoir.” To my mind, he forgot to say “and all heart.”

When I finished this book, my thoughts revolved around Steve, Annie and Beth and what could have been. Who knows what Annie could have taught him or how different life would have been if she hadn’t needed to be a secret, institutionalized for almost all of her life. As we follow Annie’s path it’s hard to not get a lump in your throat for the girl whose life could have been worlds apart from the one she lived had she been born even a few decades later. My heart goes out to them all.

Beth was by all accounts a wonderful mother and carried that burden for decades. How different would it have been had she felt able to freely discuss her sister? I would not judge Beth too harshly and I don’t think any reader will. Attitudes towards mental health were far removed from what we see today. Beth hid her sister’s existence after institutionalizaton for whatever reasons of her own. Her death means there will never be an answer from Beth’s lips as to the question of why. She simply did what she thought was best, as we all do in difficult times. Steve’s personal account is the closest we will ever come to understanding.

Annie’s Ghosts is a moving story of love, responsibility, changing times, detection, frustration and eventual resolution of sorts. The emotional bonds of family memories formed long ago are never truly broken. They can merely be concealed, never severed. Annie’s Ghosts reminds us of how one decision taken in life can resonate forever.

Every family has secrets. It’s what we do with them that counts. Steve Luxenberg chose to share his with an open heart and inquiring mind. I’m grateful he did. Sumptuous in its details and heartrending in places, Annie’s Ghosts is a gift of understanding, not only of the mental health systems of yesteryear and how far we have come, but that frailties of human nature are timeless and enduring.

I have a feeling that Annie would be smiling down on him for telling the world what she always knew: she mattered.

A fabulous, riveting book. Thank you Steve for sharing your family with us.

Annie’s Ghosts is available at all good book stores including Amazon.

(P.S. Don’t miss Steve’s excellent article right here entitled Memoirs, Movies and Those (Mostly) True Stories: A Writer’s Take on Reality’s Rough Edges.)

You can find more book reviews in our Book Reviews category of The Cuckleburr Times. Please feel free to leave a comment on this review! Registration is not required.

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