Susannah Kennedy to appear at Santa Cruz Library on September 16

Reading Jane charts the author’s pursuit of truth as she chooses to examine her uncomfortable past. Her mother Jane is to the world a charismatic personality—opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful—who thrives on a carefully crafted life narrative. Susannah, her beautiful only daughter and her intended protégé, senses the stricter, darker truth, and fights to resist the control imposed on her by her mother’s narcissistic tale, especially as Susannah becomes a mother herself.

When Jane at 75, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, she leaves her daughter with grief and the unwelcome gift of 45 years of hidden diaries. Daring to “read” Jane after her death is like unlatching Pandora’s Box. For a year, Susannah twists and turns to the “truths” she uncovers, comparing what she remembers with what her mother put down in words. As Susannah re-lives her life through her mother’s eyes, she grapples with the ties between mothers and daughters and the choices parents make.

Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India before returning to the US. As an adult, Kennedy traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before moving as a reporter to Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. She currently lives with her family in the Bay Area.

Santa Cruz Library, Capitola Branch
Ow Family Community Room
2005 Wharf Road, Capitola, CA  95010