After Long Silence: A Memoir - Hardcover

Fremont, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385333692 ISBN 13: 9780385333696

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1999

Synopsis

Helen Fremont was raised Roman Catholic in America, only to discover in adulthood that her parents were Jews who had survived the Holocaust.  Delving into the extraordinary secrets that held her family together in a bond of silence for more than forty years, she recounts with heartbreaking clarity and candor a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the eloquence of truth.

When Helen was small, her mother taught her the sign of the cross in six languages.  Theirs was the tender conspiracy of a little girl and her mother at bedtime, protected by a God who could respond in any language.  What she didn't understand was that she was being equipped with proof of her Catholicism, a hedge against persecution, real or imagined.

It wasn't until adulthood that she began to comprehend the terrible irony of her mother's gesture, as she and her sister discovered their parents' remarkable, long-held secret.  She knew that her father had spent six years in the Siberian Gulag, surviving nearly on will alone; that her mother's elder sister, fearless and proud, had married an Italian Fascist whose title and connections helped them to survive during the war.  But their faith, their legacy as Jews, was kept hidden for decades.

After Long Silence is a searching inquiry into the meaning of identity, self, and history.  It's about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones.  No one who reads this book can be left unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.

About this title

Review:

In her mid-30s Helen Fremont discovered that, although she had been raised in the Midwest as a Catholic, she was in fact the daughter of Polish Jews whose families had been exterminated in the Holocaust. Fremont's tender but unsparing memoir chronicles the voyage of discovery she took with her older sister, ferreting out information from Jewish organizations and individuals and worrying about its impact on their angry, overpowering father and reticent, nightmare-plagued mother. Fremont has the courage to paint a nearly unsympathetic portrait of her parents' secretiveness and initial reluctance to have their children dredge up the past; as the narrative unfolds, readers comprehend the tormented roots of their behavior without forgetting the psychological problems it created for their daughters. Fremont's re-creation of her parents' ghastly ordeals--her mother narrowly escaping the murder of nearly every Jew in her hometown; her father surviving six years in the Soviet gulag--is a triumph of dogged research and sympathetic imagination. Her book tells a deeply American story of identity lost and reclaimed, complete with Fremont coming out to her parents as a lesbian, yet it also achieves understanding of the dark European past and its icy grip on her family. --Wendy Smith

From the Back Cover:

"[A]n incredible tale of survival, a beautiful love story...a triumphant work of art."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Few writers have imagined the lives of their parents as fully and richly as Helen Fremont has done in After Long Silence. Her memoir is a harrowing journey and a brave attempt to insure that her family's heroic suffering has not been in vain."
--Richard Russo, author of Straight Man and Nobody's Fool

"Reading this beautifully written memoir, I was amazed all over again by the suffering of the Holocaust and the remarkable power of humans to survive almost anything, except safety. After Long Silence is a stunning testimony to the power of silence and memory."
--Margot Livesey, author of Criminals

"A stellar example of the new literary nonfiction. A page-turning, suspenseful narrative, a canny, wise-cracking narrator, and a subject as pertinent as today's newspaper headlines."
--Helen Epstein, author of Children of the Holocaust

"Helen Fremont has written a spellbinding book, heartbreakingly mysterious as all true family explorations must be. The story she tells is hair-raising, but her grasp of memory's wily ways is revelatory, and her voice is as pure as song."
--Patricia Hampl, author of A Romantic Education

"After Long Silence is an amazing chronicle of suffering and terror and rebirth and secrecy, carefully researched and courageously re-imagined to bring to light what had been hidden and hushed up. A brave and beautiful book."
--Charles Baxter, author of Believers and Shadow Play

"Helen Fremont writes with seamless authenticity and lyric tenderness about her family's piebald secrets.--A book that offers wise decisions and tender solace in re-weaving family bonds after silent chaos."
--Maria Flook, author of My Sister Life

"Helen Fremont has the rare wisdom to know that the life of the story is her subject, not the life of the autobiographer, which is only the raw material of the story. And what a story it is--about historical brutality, human frailty, moral complexity, and the power of fear, shame, and love. The result is a rich, deftly structured work of art, both profound and entertaining, and a gift to the rest of us humans: the real thing."
--Michael Ryan, author of Secret Life

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0385333692
• ISBN 13: 9780385333696
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336