Missing bookcover

Missing

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Description

Acclaimed children's book author Cornelia Maude Spelman's memoir of her family springs from a meeting and subsequent friendship with the late, legendary New Yorker editor William Maxwell in the 1920s. When Spelman hints at what she thinks of as the failure of her parents' lives, he counters that "in a good novel one doesn't look for a success story, but for a story that moves one with its human drama and richness of experience." Maxwell encourages her to tell her mother's story at their final meeting. Missing is Spelman's response to Maxwell's wisdom. With the pacing of the mystery novels her mother loved and using everything from letters and interviews to the family's quotidian paper trail-medical records, telegrams, and other oft-overlooked clues to a family's history-Spelman reconstructs her mother's life and untimely death. Along the way, she unravels mysteries of her family, including the fate of her long-lost older brother. Spelman skillfully draws the reader into the elation and sorrow that accompanies the discovery of a family's past. A profoundly loving yet honest elegy, Missing is complex and beautiful like the mother it memorializes.

Product Details

PublisherJackleg Press
Publish DateJuly 15, 2022
Pages176
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781737513445
Dimensions8.5 X 5.5 X 0.4 inches | 0.5 pounds
BISAC Categories: Biography & Memoir

About the Author

Cornelia Maude Spelman, MSW, was a therapist with children and families before turning full-time to writing and art. She's written eleven books for children that help them manage emotions and difficult life situations. Her The Way I Feel series of books for young children, described by reviewers as "sensitive" and "compassionate," has sold several million copies and been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Greek, Japanese, German, Arabic, Turkish, Danish, and Russian. Cornelia has earned awards from the Illinois Arts Council, was a finalist for the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award from Salem College, and was awarded the Bernard De Voto Fellowship in Nonfiction at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

Reviews

"Cornelia Spelman's gentle, lyrical prose belies the haunting nature of her story, a searing, honest search for the lost pieces of her family's story. Missing is a book that both comforts and astounds. It's memoir writing at its absolute finest." ─Alex Kotlowitz

"A long, intimate journey; the very honest accounting of the way old pain works its way through the generations. One of the fascinations of the whole story comes from the vicarious satisfaction of seeing someone who actually does discover every bit of what is still discoverable, and then who dares to speculate with candor about how it all fits together, not to mention how it's affected her." ─Rosellen Brown


The book is spellbinding. I'm in awe of the research and subsequent detailing that goes into it. It's a moving tribute to that richness William Maxwell talks about in human experience. The American Experience is another strong subject-the losses incurred by our peripatetic lives. I sense the necessity behind the story being told-not just the author wanting to know better her own mother and understand her, but cutting the tethers of the self and soaring into the reader's interest in universal questions. I really couldn't stop reading it, and I'll keep it with me for a long time to come.-Carol Frost


I have spent every spare minute of the last few days reading the lovely pages of Missing. I felt utterly privileged to read about this family in such fascinating detail. One reason that one wants to read a memoir is to be in the company of the narrator and I think Cornelia Maude Spelman does a wonderful job of guiding us through the story, of making us to want to board the night train and go on that journey. I admire the honesty with which she allows herself to be a character in the story and the delicacy with which she treats the other members of her family. A beautiful and enlightening book. ─Margot Livesey

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