She was a beautiful blond child, a quintessential Canadian teenager: she loved Saturday film matinees, giggled at pyjama parties, ran for student president, led the cheerleading squad, went steady with the right boy and married him, her proud father at her side. But from the age of seven Sylvia Fraser shared her body with a 'twin' who lived a separate life from her. This other self was created to do the things Sylvia was too frightened, too ashamed, too repelled to do - the things her father made her do. As an adult, she had no recollection of a sexual relationship with her father, yet some connection always remained - pain, terror and guilt were never far from the surface. With tremendous power, candour and eloquence, Sylvia Fraser breaks through her amnesia to discover and embrace the self she left behind. MY FATHER'S HOUSE is at once a terrible account of a woman's coming of age and a lyric story of love and forgiveness.
Sylvia Fraser has written six novels, four books of non-fiction, an illustrated children's book, and hundreds of magazine articles, for which she has won numerous awards.
Her book - "My Father's House: a Memoir of Incest and of Healing" - first published in 1987, was credited with breaking the silence on child sexual abuse, till then a largely taboo subject. It was described by The New York Times as having a significance comparable to "The Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mocking Bird." It was translated into many languages, and became an international bestseller.
Fraser's novels range from the contemporary to the historical. She has expressed her love of travel in "The Rope in the Water: a Pilgrimage to India" and in "The Green Labyrinth: Exploring the Mysteries of the Amazon," both following the theme of spiritual quest. Because of the many meaningful psychic incidents that she has experienced in her life, she wrote "The Quest for the Fourth Monkey: a Thinker's Guide to the Psychic and Spiritual Revolutions" (also published under the title "The Book of Strange") in an attempt to understand these events from a scientific and rational viewpoint, as well as from the intuitive and emotional one.
Most recently, Fraser cowrote "The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing" with scientist and healer Dr. William Bengston ( also published under the title "Chasing the Cure: an Effective Alternative for Curing Cancer and Other Diseases").
Sylvia Fraser lives in Toronto, Canada.
