Assembling My Father - by Anna Cypra Oliver (Paperback)

About the Book

Oliver's father's suicide, committed when she was only five years old, has haunted her all her life. In "Assembling My Father," she offers the extraordinary chronicle of her journey of discovery to learn who he was and why he died.

Book Synopsis

Anna Cypra Oliver's strikingly original book offers both a moving story of self-discovery and a vivid record of a turbulent era. In the late 1960s, Anna's father--a charismatic man from a cultivated Jewish background--and her equally urbane mother joined a countercultural enclave in Taos, New Mexico. There, amid the chaos of hippie life, their marriage foundered. Shortly after their breakup, Anna's father comitted suicide. Anna was five years old.

Twenty years later, the discovery of some old photographs launched Oliver on an obsessive quest to learn more about her father. She unearthed a forgotten journal, home movies, even a tape with her father's voice on it, and interviewed all those who knew him. The act of reconstructing a life would not only change her perceptions about her father and the turmoil of her childhood but would ultimately transform her understanding of herself.

Review Quotes

[Oliver] tells her complex and mesmerizing story with remarkable restraint and lucidity." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review --