Steve Luxenberg digs up family secrets in 'Annie's Ghosts'

Steve Luxenberg has more than 30 years of journalistic experience under his belt.  He's currently an associate editor at The Washington Post, and he is the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory journalism.  Luxenberg grew up in Detroit, but now resides in Baltimore with his wife.

His new book, Annie's Ghosts:  A Journey Into a Family Secret (Hyperion, May 2009), is about family secrets and how far someone would go to bury them.  After his mother's death in 2000, Luxenberg learned he had an aunt who lived in a psychiatric hospital from the time she was 21 in 1940 to her death in 1972 at age 53.  It was a shocking discovery, given that his mother told everyone she was an only child, and only a handful of the people close to her before Annie's institutionalization knew she had a sister.  In Annie's Ghosts, Luxenberg journeys home to bring Annie's to life  -- a riveting journey that touches upon the history of the public mental health system in America, the Holocaust in Ukraine, and what to make of family secrets when they are exposed.

Here's what Luxenberg has to say about Annie's Ghosts:

Photo credit: The Washington Post

You dealt with a lot of conflicting emotions -- internally and from your siblings -- when determining whether to go ahead and uncover as much of Annie's story as you could.  Has your family read the book yet, and if so, what are their thoughts?

The manuscript made the rounds of the family, and generated a lot of discussion -- which I benefited from as I worked on the revisions.  My siblings have been involved since the beginning, and aware of what I was setting out to do, which doesn't mean that everyone sees the story in the same way.

My older brother, Mike, had the most reservations, not about what I might uncover or write, but about whether I could ever truly understand my mom's motivations in hiding the existence of her disabled sister, and keeping that secret throughout her life.  Mike told me, "I don't think you can ever stand in her shoes."

He was interviewed by The Baltimore Sun after the book came out.  He was quoted this way:  "I didn't think my mother would like the idea for this book.  But after discussing the book with Steven, I realized it was very important to him, and I told him I'd support him 100 percent.  Besides, Annie's Ghosts doesn't pretend to be a full and complete picture of my mother.  Steven uses my aunt's story to talk about larger issues -- immigration, and the Holocaust, and mental institutions."

That told me that he was comfortable with the book.  As I wrote in the acknowledgments, "A secret stands at the center of Annie's Ghosts; a family's support stands behind it."

At what point did you decide that your journey to find Annie would become a book?  What were your reasons for writing it?

I had three goals:  First, to understand my mom's motivations for keeping her secret.  Second, to learn as much as I could about Annie, about this woman I never knew existed, and restore the identity that she lost during her 31 years in a mental hospital.  Third, to describe in a vivid way the cultural forces that swirled around these two women.  Then, I wanted to tell a compelling and memorable story about secrecy and its consequences, and how my mom's secret kept its hold on her.

I think all nonfiction writers worry about not finding out enough.  After seven months of reporting in 2006, I thought I had enough to persuade a publisher that, yes, this was a great story and that I could write a great book.  It was gratifying when several agreed, and made offers.  One interested publisher thought I would never find out enough about Annie.  That didn't bother me.  Recreating Annie's world was crucial to telling that story, but recreating Annie's daily life was not.  The book has several narratives in play; removing Annie's anonymity is only one of them.

You describe your cousin Anna Oliwek's Holocaust survival story in Annie's Ghosts, and it prompted you to do some research on the Nazi massacres of Jews in Radziwillow.  Are there any books or other resources you would recommend to learn more about this piece of World War II history?

The literature of the Holocaust is so extensive, and getting more so all the time.  For those particularly interested in the Holocaust in Ukraine, there's a French priest, Patrick Desbois, who has been leading a team of researchers in trying to uncover this less reported chapter of World War II.

Desbois provided the material for an exhibit that has toured museums in Europe and the United States (I saw it at the Holocaust museum in Paris and it also came to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington).  Desbois published a book last year, The Holocaust by Bullet:  A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews.  I mention several other books on the subject in Annie's Ghosts.

Do you have plans to publish any other books in the future?  Any fiction on the horizon?

I have several ideas, but I haven't done enough reporting yet to decide which is best.  All involve a combination of history, narrative and investigation, just like this one.  Someone recently asked me what sort of journalism I did.  I said, "Whenever I can, I try to get to the bottom of things."

Fiction?  I'm in awe of novelists, and a bit envious -- how wonderful to be able to fill in the blanks of a character's actions by imagining or creating them.  But for now, I'm sticking to nonfiction.  Annie's Ghosts whetted my appetite for that form of storytelling, and I've only begun to figure out how to apply my particular skills and literary sensibility to the real-life subjects out there.

What are your five most favorite books?

That's the hardest question you've asked!  I wouldn't mind if that word, favorite, were banished from interviews.  It's an easy shortcut, but it's so hard to pick out a few favorites from the many, many great books I've read.  I hope you won't mind if I modify the question a bit, while keeping to the spirit of what you asked.

As a nonfiction writer, I often find myself gravitating toward fiction when I leave the keyboard for the day.  Here are five novels I've read in the past five years that stayed with me long after the last page:  David Mitchell's Black Swan Green (a coming-of-age story of a boy with a stammer in 1983 Britain), Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown (divided Kashmir as metaphor), Kim Edwards's The Memory Keeper's Daughter (a book about family secrets that has parallels to Annie's Ghosts), Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (a nine-year-old boy's post-9/11 story) and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise (chaos and survival in the months after the Nazis occupied France).

I love history, but writers of history tell their stories at lengths that require a kind of monogamy that I'm not always willing to spare, so I limit myself.  I spent a month last fall immersed in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals (her Lincoln opus), a book that I wish I could call my own.

Two memoirs that have stayed with me for several years:  Roya Hakakian's Journey From the Land of No, about growing up in revolutionary Tehran, and Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty, perhaps the most honest writing about friendship I've had the chance to read.

Thanks for your questions.  If readers want to know more about Annie's Ghosts, or my speaking schedule, there's a wealth of information at my website, steveluxenberg.com.