A family of strangers

the long version

"In a lyric essay-cum-memoir, her third book of nonfiction, Deborah Tall explores the genealogy of the missing. Haunted by her orphaned father's abandonment by his extended family, his secretive, walled-off trauma and absent history, she sets off in pursuit of the family he claims not to have. From the dutiful happiness of Levittown in the 1950s to a stricken former shtetl in Ukraine, we follow Tall's journey through evasions and lies. Reflecting on family secrecy, postwar American culture, and the urge for roots, Tall's search uncovers not just a missing family but an understanding of the part family and history play in identity. A Family of Strangers is Tall's life's work, told in such exacting, elegant language that the suppressed past vividly asserts its place in the present."--Jacket.