Berkeley and Oxford-Educated Anthropologist Chronicles Her Experience of Reading 45 Years of Her Mother’s Diaries, After Her Mother’s Death by Suicide
(Grass Valley, CA) – On September 5, 2023, Sibylline Press will release READING JANE: A Daughter’s Memoir by Susannah Kennedy.
Outwardly, Jane presented a charismatic personality—opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful. Susannah is her beautiful only daughter, her intended protégé.
But then Jane at 75 years old, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, insisting it is best for everyone this way.
Susannah is left with 45 years of her mother’s diaries. For a year, Susannah reads, twisting and turning to the truths she uncovers, comparing what she remembers against the strange pull of her mother’s public tale. This process is accompanied by physical symptoms, each memory encased in her body. And then she uncovers yet another secret, one that redefines her mother forever. At last Susannah is able to separate, heal and embrace her own story.
About Susannah Kennedy: Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India and raised in the United States. Later, she traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before becoming a reporter in Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. She and her psychoanalyst husband lived and worked in Germany, raising three children in a thatched-roof farmhouse in the countryside outside Hamburg. Her mother’s suicide and its aftermath brought them back to Santa Cruz, California in 2017. They now reside in Marin County.
READING JANE by Susannah Kennedy | 9-5-2023 | Tradepaper | ISBN: 978-1-7367954-7-7 | Memoir | 306 pages
Sibylline Press publishes the work of brilliant women over 50, exclusively. It was founded in 2022 by publishing industry veterans Vicki DeArmon, Julia Park Tracey, Alicia Feltman, and Anna Termine. Sibylline Press is distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West. Sibylline Press takes its name from the Sibylline Books, the ancient writings of wise older women, the Sibyls. More at sibyllinepress.com.
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