BOOK SPOTLIGHT: All-of-a-Kind of Family series

Among the first books I remember reading on my own, More-All-of-a-Kind described the life of an Orthodox Jewish family in NYC, circa WWI. The second book in the series "mysteriously" appeared in the bookshelf that my mother kept for "show." I was the only one who actually read the books. Mother's proudest inclusion was a multi-volume bound set of old (Reader's Digest?) encyclopedias; each one included a dedication page to the current president: Dwight E. Eisenhower. The copy of More All of a Kind Family was likely a gift from one of the wealthy (to us) women my mother cleaned house for.

I'd always "known" --gut/intuition-- that I'd somehow been "misplaced" in my strict/medieval Catholic uber-practical-anti-intellectual family. There was NO one even remotely like me among my relatives (or so I thought). I was a solitary dreamy/spacey kid who read "too many books," according to my mother. She worried about the effects of reading on my mental heath, and of course, on the sanctity my soul. She'd tell me to stop reading & go watch television to "rest" my head. Seriously.

Often, she confiscated my library books for review. Bizarro world. I remember once slipping books under the floor-boards of my bed. But my mom would go into my room, "just to clean up," and search under the bed. (I had a bit of fun with this habit when I became an adolescent).

I was a library hound & didn't much care that other kids considered me a dork. I was an arrogant little F---. At the Ossining & Briarcliff Public Libraries, I located all the books in the series.

I identified w/ the four daughters (in an Orthodox family of 5 children) & longed for their close-knit community life. And mostly, I loved traveling back in time to a world radically different from my own. The truth WAS stranger than fiction. No surprise that I became a writer of narrative nonfiction.

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