Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret [Hardcover]

Steve Luxenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2009

Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Everyone knew it: her grown children, her friends, even people she'd only recently met. So when her secret emerged, her son Steve Luxenberg was bewildered. He was certain that his mother had no siblings, just as he knew that her name was Beth, and that she had raised her children, above all, to tell the truth.

By then, Beth was nearly eighty, and in fragile health. While seeing a new doctor, she had casually mentioned a disabled sister, sent away at age two. For what reason? Was she physically disabled? Mentally ill? The questions were dizzying, the answers out of reach. Beth had said she knew nothing of her sister's fate.

Six months after Beth's death in 1999, the secret surfaced once more. This time, it had a name: Annie.

Steve Luxenberg began digging. As he dug, he uncovered more and more. His mother's name wasn't Beth. His aunt hadn't been two when she'd been hospitalized. She'd been twenty-one; his mother had been twenty-three. The sisters had grown up together. Annie had spent the rest of her life in a mental institution, while Beth had set out to hide her sister's existence. Why?

Employing his skills as a journalist while struggling to maintain his empathy as a son, Luxenberg pieces together the story of his mother's motivations, his aunt's unknown life, and the times in which they lived. His search takes him to imperial Russia and Depression-era Detroit, through the Holocaust in Ukraine and the Philippine war zone, and back to the hospitals where Annie and many others were lost to memory.

Combining the power of reportage with the intrigue of mystery, Annie's Ghosts explores the nature of self-deception and self-preservation. The result is equal parts memoir, social history, and riveting detective story.

Reviews
"The author calls on his investigative reporting skills not just to uncover the facts, but to explore what happens when lies or omissions become truth, exposing the contradictions, contrasts and parallels that exist within every life, every relationship and every family. Beautifully complex, raw and revealing."
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

"Part memoir, part mystery, part history of the mental-health movement, Annie's Ghosts is a fascinating account of a life lived in the shadows."
--Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

"Luxenberg's beautiful book is in part the story of secrecy itself, when words carried mysterious power and wounds could not be healed through forgiveness."
--Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and There Is No Me Without You

"It is too simple to call this a magnificent detective story. More than that, Annie's Ghosts is an honest and faithful rumination on a sad, delicate mystery . . . a remarkable journey to the very center of a secret."
--David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire

"Steve Luxenberg's hunt for the story of his hidden aunt is both a gripping detective story and a haunting memoir. It will leave you breathless. The personal tale is astonishing, and Luxenberg uses it to explore, in a deft and poignant way, the nature of secrets, memories, historical truth, and family love."
--Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin

"Steve Luxenberg sleuths his family's hidden history with the skills of an investigative reporter, the instincts of a mystery writer, and the sympathy of a loving son. His rediscovery of one lost woman illuminates the shocking fate of thousands of Americans who disappeared just a generation ago."
--Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Confederates in the Attic

"Annie's Ghosts is perhaps the most honest, and one of the most remarkable books I have ever read. It is an exploration into a family's past, a relentless hunt that unearths buried secrets with multiple layers and the uncertain motives of their keepers, and one son's attempt to fully understand the details and meaning of what has been hidden . . . From mental institutions to the Holocaust, from mothers and fathers to children and childhood, with its mysteries, sadness and joy--this book is one emotional ride."
--Bob Woodward, author of The War Within and State of Denial

"I started reading within minutes of picking up this book, and was instantly mesmerized. It's a riveting detective story, a moving family saga, an enlightening if heartbreaking chapter in the history of America's treatment of people born with what we now call special needs."
--Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and You're Wearing That?

"This is a memoir that pushes the journalistic envelope . . . Luxenberg has written a fascinating personal story as well as a report on our communal response to the mentally ill."
--Helen Epstein, author of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust

"This is a book about secrets: family secrets, secrets as wounds, secrets that begin as tactics and end as shackles. Like an archaeologist obsessed, Steve Luxenberg digs to unearth the long-buried truth about his mother's hidden sister . . . we learn about lost worlds and a lost time, we learn about ourselves, and we learn about the universally wounding, shackling, echoing life of secrets."
--Walter Reich, MD, former Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics, and Human Behavior, and Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington University

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Throughout her life, Luxenberg’s mother, Beth, reveled in her status as an only child. Then, a few years before her death in 1999—and utterly out of the blue—she admitted to having a mentally and physically disabled younger sister named Annie, who died in 1972. Beth’s failing health precluded Luxenberg and his siblings from learning any more. After Beth’s passing, Luxenberg set out in search of answers. His dual roles as reporter and son proved both blessing and curse; the journalist dug furiously for facts, while the son wondered if long-buried secrets were best kept that way. His questions were many: What prompted Annie’s commitment, at age 21, to Eloise Hospital, southeastern Michigan’s sprawling psychiatric facility? Why was there next to no record of her early years? Most baffling of all, why did Beth, two years Annie’s senior, refuse for so long to acknowledge her sibling’s existence? Armed with superb investigative skills and relentless determination, Washington Post senior editor Luxenberg tracked down remaining family and friends and interviewed an exhaustive list of experts who might shed light on Annie’s plight. Part memoir, part mystery, part history of the mental-health movement, Annie’s Ghosts is a fascinating account of a life lived in the shadows and a family beset by despair. --Allison Block

About the Author

Steve Luxenberg has been a senior editor with the Washington Post for twenty-two years, overseeing reporting that has won numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory journalism. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; First Edition edition (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401322476
• ISBN-13: 978-1401322472
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (103 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steve Luxenberg, an associate editor at The Washington Post, has worked for more than 30 years as a newspaper editor and reporter.

Steve's journalistic career began at The Baltimore Sun, where he worked for 11 years. He joined The Post in 1985 as deputy editor of the newspaper's investigative/special projects staff, headed by assistant managing editor Bob Woodward. In 1991, he succeeded Woodward as head of the investigative staff. Post reporters working with Steve have won several major reporting awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory journalism.

From 1996 to 2006, Steve was the editor of The Post's Sunday Outlook section, which publishes original reporting and provocative commentary on a broad spectrum of political, historical and cultural issues.

Steve has given talks and workshops about journalism issues and nonfiction writing at universities and discussion forums, and has made occasional guest appearances on radio and television shows to discuss the media. He also has a television "credit": Look carefully, and you'll see him as an extra in the fifth and final season of HBO's dramatic series, "The Wire," which aired in 2008. (Hint: It's a newsroom scene in episode three, and he's shaking his head.)

In his current role as a Post associate editor focusing on special projects, Steve has directed coverage of in-depth stories on the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that unfolded in the fall of 2008. One of those projects, on the rise and fall of insurance giant AIG, was a 2009 Pulitzer finalist.

He grew up in Detroit, where Annie's Ghosts primarily takes place. He and his wife, Mary Jo Kirschman, a school librarian, live in Baltimore. They have two grown children, Josh and Jill.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Choices, Secrets and Memories, June 18, 2009

By 

ck "moonshadow" (Hawaii nei) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

At what point do you stop controlling a secret and find that it's controlling you? That's one of the questions at the heart of Steve Luxenberg's utterly compelling first book, "Annie's Ghosts" Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret. Part memoir, part biography and part investigative reporting, this book humanizes a subject that probably touches more of us than we might realize.

Luxenberg's journey begins as a son's quest to learn why his mother turned her sibling from younger sister to lifelong secret and expands to become an exploration of a particularly moving era in recent American history.

Several months after Luxenberg's mom died, the cemetery where her parents were buried sent the family a letter containing a simple question that was to lead Luxenberg and his siblings on a journey through their family's past. "Spring was around the corner," Luxenberg writes, "and the cemetery was offering to plant flowers on the grave sites." The solicitation wasn't for two sites, however, but for three. Suddenly, this whisper of a woman had a name, Annie. Her burial certificate answered some questions, but led to others that took Luxenberg deep into the dynamics of his own family as well as the evolving nature of health care in the United States during several key decades of the 20th century.

He soon found himself part of a wave of thousands of family members seeking information about relatives who'd been institutionalized--relatives they'd never known they had. "I couldn't write about all the `forgotten people,' but I could write about one," Luxenberg writes of his decision to ferret out Annie's tale.

Steve Luxenberg is a veteran newspaperman, and his journalistic instincts and contacts definitely helped him develop questions and efficiently seek answers. However, he's also a son and a brother, and the decision to step outside the bounds of impartial reporter to involved memoirist and family historian cannot have been easy. His love for his mom and his family illuminates every chapter, even as he struggles with why his mom--who lived by the rule of honesty--chose to keep such a key element of her life a secret.

In the end, drawing on primary and secondary sources, and leavening these facts with his knowledge of his mom, he finds answers. Too late, as he notes in his dedication, for his mom and Annie ... but perhaps not for the other 5,000 whose families may still have time to reconnect.

I read this book twice. The first time, for the tale of Annie and the Luxenbergs; the second, for the larger historical picture. As I've written and rewritten this review, I've struggled with how to describe this book without spoiling the intensely personal journey it conveys. So I'll have to leave it at this. If you've ever loved or been loved, this book will hit you in the gut.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Memoir, April 29, 2009

By 

Sunny @ the Library "sunnyatthelibrary.com" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret (Hardcover)

The subject matter here is fascinating: the stuff of Hollywood films or interesting novels.

After his mother's death (and not from a "deathbed confession" as the book's current blurb claims), journalist Steve Luxenberg learns something startling -- He has an aunt.

Or rather, had.

A letter from a cemetery asking about routine maintenance for a grave helps Steve begin to coax this particular family skeleton out of the closet. See, his mother's sister, Annie, was institutionalized. And as much as Steve might try to justify the obvious shame and embarrassment (even hatred? resentment?) that his mother felt, his difficulties in rationalization increase when he discovers this wasn't some sister his mom barely knew, socked away as a child, or dying young -- Annie was institutionalized when Steve's mother was in her early 20s. His mother had spent a significant portion of her life living with Annie, and Annie didn't die young. She lived into her 50s. She must have been a fixture around the neighborhood. How had his mother kept this secret all these years, and why?

A journalist by trade, Steve begins investigating his own family history, immediately discovering the difficulties that even the state throws in the way of those who would like to learn more about its former wards. As Steve struggles to obtain records and interview family and friends, some of whom are dying before he can speak to them, the reader is along for an exciting ride. Steve's careful research on the institution Eloise, Annie's contemporaries' views on mental illness, and how a physical handicap (malformed leg) might have affected Annie, absolutely shine.

However, at some point the memoir shifts focus, partially because the information Steve can gather about Annie is, ultimately, sparse, and the burning question Steve tries to answer becomes not, "Who was Annie?" but, "Did my Dad know?" While the author barely accepts what his mother has done (and he only accepts it because it is the bare truth) he seems horrified that his father might have been complicit too. It becomes a bit of an obsession and is also when the story loses my interest a little. However, it comes late enough in this otherwise engaging investigation for the reader to already be invested, and carries through to a strong finish.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed reading Annie's Ghosts. I had a very hard time putting it down and read it in as few sittings as possible. It is certainly a great narrative that I will be haunted by for years to come.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Layers upon layers upon layers, May 25, 2009

By 

S. Lionel (NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I won't repeat a synopsis of Annie's Ghosts - the "Product Description" does a good job of that. I will tell you what went through my mind as I read through this remarkable book.

As the blurb says, Luxenberg made good use of his journalistic skills to dig into the mystery that was his aunt, Annie. I was amazed at the resources he was able to make use of, not the least was the welcome cooperation of government clerks who went out of their way to look for information. He also was able to locate and get the cooperation of relatives and friends of his mother, many of which he had never known or not seen since childhood.

What I wasn't expecting, from what I had heard of this book, were the side stories; about the history of how we treated the mentally ill in the early 1900s and how things would be different today for Annie, and about the Holocaust and the Russian execution of Jews. This last resonated with me because, like Luxenberg, I am the child of Jewish immigrants who fled the Holocaust and pogroms. I was amazed at the connections he was able to make and his luck, really, in not doing this even a few years later when many of his best sources would have likely been dead. It made me regret not learning more about my own family while I still could.

As the book progressed, and more and more secrets were revealed, it seemed to me that Luxenberg's quest was really more about him and desire to know as much as he could about his family. There's a lot of introspective prose which at times feels like filler. I also tripped over some places, mainly early in the book, where he quotes someone, a few paragraphs later repeats the quote, and then repeats it again on the next page. Since I was reading a pre-publication copy, it's possible that these will be trimmed out before release.

While Annie's Ghosts is not my usual reading fare, I found the story captivating and, like the author, I wanted to know what happened next. In the process, Luxenberg reveals some horrors about overwhelmed mental institutions of the early 20th century, despite the best intentions of the medical staff. People's attitudes towards physical and mental disabilities have changed less, however, and Luxenberg's story made me stop and think more than once. It's well worth reading.

A side note - I first heard about Annie's Ghosts when NPR interviewed the author. When I've heard these interviews in the past, I often marveled at how the host had managed to find the time to read the book they quoted from. But, perhaps in this case, it seemed that everything discussed was from the first 10 pages or so. Maybe that's their secret?