Legacy of Shadows [Hardcover]

Lillian Moats (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2009

No one goes unaffected by the dreams and failures of our ancestors. In events played out before one is even born, our stories have already begun. Lillian Moats' evocative fictionalized memoir traces the lives of three women whose stories indelibly blend into one during the span of three generations. Intensely moving and untimately hopeful, the story evolved from the author's exploration into the mysterious impact of family history on her own psychology. Moats' distinctive literary style is as much poetry as prose. Conveying psychological nuances in few words, she adopts the format of the journal rather than the novel to explore the legacy of unresolved emotion passed from generation to generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Moats, a filmmaker, artist, and author of The Gate of Dreams (1993), has written a poetic fictionalized memoir that recounts the most bewildering and frightening of experiences, the onslaught of mental illness. In culling through painful memories, she came to the realization that "each of us is deeply directed by the legacy of unresolved emotion passed from generation to generation." The legacy her novel explicates is the shadow of guilt and grief thrown across time by the death of a child. It was 1904 when Christianna lost two-year-old Anna, her first-born, while pregnant with Lisbet. Tormented by sorrow, she never let her surviving daughter forget that "there was one who came before." Haunted by her lost sister and her mother's despair, Lisbet names her daughter Anna and demands loyalty rather than freely giving love. For all her suffering, Anna is more fortunate: she gets help and breaks the spell. Moats' sequencing of scenes and gift for metaphor and distillation render her psychologically acute narrative as supple as film without sacrificing the beauty unique to language. Donna Seaman

Review

Moats ... has written a poetic fictionalized memoir that recounts the most bewildering and frightening of experiences, the onslaught of mental illness. In culling through painful memories, she came to the realization that ''each of us is deeply directed by the legacy of unresolved emotion passed from generation to generation.'' The legacy her novel explicates is the shadow of guilt and grief thrown across time by the death of a child.... Moats' sequencing of scenes and gift for metaphor and distillation render her psychologically acute narrative as supple as film without sacrificing the beauty unique to language. --Donna Seaman, BOOKLIST, Aug. 1999

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Three Arts Press; 1st edition (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966957601
• ISBN-13: 978-0966957600
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,377,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.