There's no such thing as a tell-all memoir (nor should there be), even when it's spoken from the heart.

My Republican mom was probably surprised to see Laura Bush's new memoir, Spoken from the Heart, delivered to her Kindle on Mother's Day. My political opinions differ sharply from those of George W. Bush (not to mention my parents), and I've always found Laura Bush to be kind of on the Stepford side. I was never sure if she was just uptight or completely emotionally shut down. But last year, I discovered she was neither. While I was researching my forthcoming project, Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, a memoir by Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and a close friend of Laura Bush for almost thirty years, I came upon a few personal letters from Laura to Nancy, and I spoke with Nancy at some length about their friendship. (That's not spilling any beans. In Spoken From the Heart, Laura talks about volunteering with Nancy's newborn foundation back in the 1980s in Dallas and tells how the two of them spent time with women in cancer wards in Budapest in 2002 while Nancy was ambassador to Hungary.)

As a writer specializing in the craft of memoir, I was eager to see how Mrs. Bush's book was done, and as you would expect, it is very well done indeed. Michiko Kakutani's opening thoughts in the NY Times review:

Laura Bush’s new memoir, “Spoken From the Heart,” is really two books. The first is a deeply felt, keenly observed account of her childhood and youth in Texas — an account that captures a time and place with exacting emotional precision and that demonstrates how Mrs. Bush’s lifelong love of books has imprinted her imagination. The second book is a thoroughly conventional autobiography by a politician’s wife — a rote recitation of travel, public appearances and meetings with foreign dignitaries that sheds not the faintest new light on the presidency of the author’s husband, George W. Bush.

I agree. For me, the impression of Laura Bush in the front half of the book is much more in keeping with the woman I learned about from those letters and stories. But why would we expect anything different?

Laura Bush is not free to say whatever she wants to say about her husband's presidency. There are rules. And worse yet, there are lawyers. I've been through a number of legal reviews for memoirs ranging from the mom of a sports legend to stage and screen stars to political mover/shakers, and it's incredibly stringent, even for the most low key folks. A memoir by a former First Lady would be subject to the highest level of cross-checking, spin-doctoring, temporizing, fact-checking, tact-checking, buffing, waxing, tweezing...I'm exhausted at the very thought of the "write-arounds" required to get the story from one year to the next. Some material is still classified information, and other material is just nobody's dang business. The question of what to share and what not to share in a memoir is always a complex issue, and for someone in her position, it had to be complex to the tenth power.

In the front matter, Mrs. Bush acknowledges the "talented and beautiful writer" Lyric Winik, a Princeton grad, book author in her own right, and Washington correspondent for Parade magazine, married to bestselling historian, Jay Winik. (Note to self: Never play Scrabble with the Winiks.) The book really is extremely well written--flawlessly constructed with a strong, sweet, consistent voice. Winik did a fantastic job of capturing the warmth of a southern lilt without burdening the book with hokey idioms or other forms of southsploitation.

I wonder if it crossed Winik's mind (though I'm sure it wasn't even an option) to end the book with election night 2000. As a writer, she must have known that the richly personal flavor of the book would turn guarded at that point. Readers are bound to feel that glass door sliding shut, but there was no way it could do otherwise. The moment Laura Bush became First Lady, her words and actions--like her ability to go to the grocery store or stand in line at the post office--were in a larger context, along with the very meaning of the words "freedom" and "isolation." Mrs. Bush doesn't complain about this dynamic, but she does mention it, and it's clearly felt in the change in tone. There's a loneliness about this book that's kind of heartbreaking at times. Maybe that's what's coming through loud and clear in what's unspoken from the heart.

Memoir Maverickiness (Letterman shares Sarah Palin's Top 10 tips for writing a book)

Secrets and memories (a conversation with "Annie's Ghosts" author Steve Luxenberg)

"Part memoir, part detective story, part history," Steve Luxenberg's riveting memoir Annie’s Ghosts is the story of a journalist's search for his own hidden family history. (Read more about it on the Friday edition of BtO and click here to read the prologue.) The book is out in hardcover from Hyperion this week, buzz is healthy, and Luxenberg is making the rounds...

Steve, I was really taken with this book, and I appreciate your taking the time to pay us a visit. I have my theories about the healing properties and “cosmic cartography” of memoirs. Was it just the journalist in you that couldn't resist the secret your mother had so painstakingly kept or is something larger at the heart of this memoir?
There's a personal journey involved in any memoir, and there's one in mine as well. I wanted to apply the discipline of journalism to ferret out the reasons why my mom kept hidden the existence of a disabled sister, a secret she kept for more than more than 50, and never revealed to her family. But I didn’t want to push aside my feelings—they were part of the story, too.

As readers of Annie's Ghosts will learn, quite early in the book, there's a painful day for my mom and me. She's begging me to take her out of a psychiatric ward where she's supposed to stay for two weeks, and I'm unsure about what to do. She keeps repeating, "You don't understand, I can't stay here." Because I didn't know her secret, because I didn't know she had a sister who had spent 31 years in a psychiatric institution, I truly didn't understand.

It would be inaccurate to say that Annie's Ghosts arises from that single day. But the events of that day—-and the emotions that went along with them—-certainly were central to my desire to find out as much as I could about her reasons for creating and keeping the secret.

I'll try hard to avoid spoilers here, but as you say right up front in Annie's Ghosts, "secrets have a way of working themselves free of their keepers.” You also mention early on that your mom constantly brought up the fact that she was an only child. Was it possible that she was baiting you? That on some level she wanted her brilliant journalist son to uncover the truth? Perhaps you are the "savior" she yearned for in her love letters to your dad.
Thanks for caring about spoilers! I don’t mind revealing a bit of the story—-the prologue is available on my website, and I don’t want to frustrate your readers with vague answers.

Baiting me? I doubt it. My mom, whose name was Beth, created the secret before I was born. I can’t imagine that I became central to her thinking about whether to let it out.

Then, in 1995, she inexplicably told a psychiatrist as he was taking a routine family history that she had a disabled sister. She didn’t tell the psychiatrist that she was hiding her sister’s existence, and he didn’t take any particular note of it. But a social worker had heard Mom describe herself as an only child, and so she asked my sister, “Did your mom have a sister?” That was our first inkling of the secret.

Characterizing herself as an only child, sometimes in vivid detail, was a necessary part of my mom’s deception, it seems to me. She had to believe it, otherwise she might stumble when asked her about her childhood. She took the lead, heading off questions by telling people, upon first meeting, “I’m an only child.”

By the way, I'm not sure I can accept your kind characterization of my talents. A "brilliant journalist" might have felt his antenna quiver when he heard the first wisps of the secret from the social worker. But I was reacting as a son, and the son didn't suspect that the few details Mom had volunteered to the psychiatrist weren’t true.

Part of what kept pages turning for me was a growing emotional investment as the story of your mother and her sister peels like an onion, but I felt guilty at moments. As if I was rummaging the top drawer of this woman’s nightstand. At the same time, Annie's story reveals the damaging nature of secrets. How did you define the "need to know" parameters as you crafted the story?
That question—am I invading her privacy?—stayed with me throughout my search. But I didn’t feel I was rummaging in her drawer. I can’t imagine I would have written this book if she were alive. But her death changed the parameters. It triggered the events that caused the secret to emerge a second time, and with enough information to suggest that there was a larger story here.

If my mom were still alive, and the secret had come to the surface, it would have been her story to tell, not mine. Annie’s Ghosts is largely my story, a combination of detective story and memoir, as I try to put myself back in my mom’s place and time so that I can understand her decision. At the same time, it’s also an attempt to restore my secret aunt’s identity, to describe her life as best as I could.

As Dickens once wrote, every family has its secrets, and I think that's why so many early readers are connecting to the book. People can identify with my mom, and the trap that she set for herself by carrying this secret. I've come to believe that her secret became a burden, and that she wanted to let it out, but felt she couldn't.

Should my mom have revealed her secret? I think so. I don’t believe that all secrets are damaging, or that we should live our lives as open books, for anyone to read. But here’s a simple rule that I think helps: If a secret is causing pain, to you or those close to you, then it’s time to consider whether to let it go.

Your quest is going to resonate with anyone who's into family history (and anyone who loves a good mystery), but the cultural aspect of this story took you way above and beyond the casual visit to MyFamilyTree.com. During the writing process, did the balance come naturally or were you making conscious choices about how to integrate personal story and social comment?
Good writing always involves conscious choice. I saw my mom, and my aunt, as being part of a much larger canvass, and I wanted to connect them, seamlessly if I could, to the social forces that shaped them—immigration, poverty, Depression-era Detroit, wartime, the evolution of public mental hospitals into huge institutions, aided by a legal system that handled allegations of insanity as more akin to a crime than a medical problem.

Readers will visit a time and place that is familiar to them, and yet will seem very different. My aunt’s stay at the hospital known as Eloise—which at its peak had more than 10,000 residents, half of whom were psychiatric patients—spanned two eras in the treatment of the mentally ill. That allowed me to marry the narrative of her life to the narrative of the revolution in mental health treatment that occurred in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The memoir genre has taken some serious hits in the last few years with high profile books turning out to be BS, buyers and reviewers getting skeptical, and legal reviews intensifying. Care to wax philosophical about any of that?
On a Facebook discussion recently, the question came up: How far should memoir writers go in reconstructing scenes and dialogue?

The answer might seem obvious, but as you said, a few high-profile memoirs have gone beyond reconstructed dialogue. Some memoir writers even argue that invention (based on memory, of course) is legitimate — because truth, they say, is in the eye of the beholder anyway.

I draw a harder line. I favor the rough edges of memory over neat and pretty reconstructions. (More interesting, usually.) Invention? That's why we have novels.

Readers, I think, are smart. They know that most writers don't have notes or documents to back up dialogue from long ago. So what's the problem? In a word: Credibility. As a writer, I want readers to grant me some license to tell my story. But if I present lengthy dialogue as fact, I risk losing their trust—and their interest. Bad deal for me.

Steve, thanks for your time. Before I let you go, I have to ask: What are you reading?
Never enough! As a nonfiction writer, I often myself gravitating toward fiction when I leave the keyboard for the day. 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. I spent a month last fall immersed in Team of Rivals, a book that I wish I could call my own.

Since then, I’ve read Charles Lane’s remarkable account of a post-Civil War massacre in Louisiana, The Day Freedom Died; a collection of novelist Michael Chabon’s essays, Maps and Legends; novelist Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day (set in Boston at the time of the 1918-19 police strike), and novelist Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News.

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.

Angels and liars (and another dark moment for memoirs)

Dang. Oprah is going to be seriously pissed when she sees this. Last year, she featured a compelling story that left audiences breathless: a boy in a concentration camp (cue cello) survives with the help of a girl who slips apples to him through the barbed wire fence and then years later, having resettled in America, (cue violin) astonishingly, he meets this very girl on a blind date and marries her! Herman Rosenblat first shared this heart-wrenching tale in a newspaper contest about ten years ago. It was subsequently featured on Oprah (in '96 and '07) and other media. A portion of the story was retold in Laurie Friedman's picture book Angel Girl (Carolhroda Books, 2008), and Berkley Books was gearing up to publish Rosenblat’s memoir, Angel at the Fence, in February with the film rights already optioned.

Today Lynn Andriani reports in Publishers Weekly:

Upon learning that the widely publicized Holocaust love story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat, which inspired the picture book Angel Girl, is not entirely true, Lerner Publishing Group announced yesterday that it would pull the book from shelves...The house has canceled all pending reprints and is issuing refunds on all returned books. The company is no longer offering the book for sale and is recalling the book from the market.

...After investigation by the New Republic, Rosenblat and his agent, Andrea Hurst, released statements on December 27, saying parts of his story were fabricated. Hurst’s statement said that although Rosenblat’s stories from the concentration camps were true, he invented the love story. Rosenblat also revealed that he made up the chance reunion with the girl.

This sucks on so many levels, most notably for Friedman, who took Rosenblat's story on faith (as did O) and is now going to be crucified for his sins. It's also heartbreaking for artist Ofra Amit, whose luminous paintings illustrate Angel Girl. Friedman told PW that her goal in writing the book was "to communicate that even in the darkest of times, no one should give up hope.” She might want to post that on her office wall for the next few months. She should also email it to Oprah. Since she's been chicken Freyed on this issue once before, I suspect it's going to be a cold day in Ixtapa before she features another memoir on her show, and that (said the memoirist) really kills me. The word "memoir" is becoming synonymous with "bull", and that is an injustice to all those who dig deep, do the work, and tell their true stories.

As a memoir guru, frequent flyer, and all-around motherly type, I spend a lot of my life listening to the stories of clients, seatmates, and strangers. I don't take these stories with a grain of salt; I take them with a grain of sugar. If I can't listen to someone with a willing and compassionate heart, I may as well just sit there and eat my peanuts. When you truly listen to someone's story, you're not hearing a recitation of facts; you're hearing a longing for redemption, a search for meaning, a plea for vindication or forgiveness. Some moments receive plastic surgery, others a decent burial. Shrines are built in the heart and mind. We each have our own truth.

Perhaps Rosenblat's wife is an angel in his eyes, and at what moment could an angel be more desperately prayed for? Perhaps what kept him going was the idea of a future of love and plenty. Maybe what sustained him was the faith that there would be witnesses to this terrible moment, that help was just on the other side of the wire. Or maybe he just went slightly (and understandably) nuts. In fabricating this story, either he's revealing an image created by his mind as a means of self-preservation or he's consciously spinning straw into gold, cranking out a line of BS which brought him rewards and recognition he felt he'd earned.

If Rosenblat had told this story to his grandchildren and let it go at that, there would have been no harm in it. (Oh, grow up. Sixty percent of all family lore is fairy tale. Your grandmother did not trip on the cellar stair and invent the potato pancake.) This is an elderly man who was a prisoner at Buchenwald; that much we know is factually correct. God alone knows what he actually endured and how he lived through it. If history is written by the winners, he gets to write this episode because his every heartbeat is a victory over incredible odds and unthinkable wrong. That's undisputed truth. But it's not the kind of truth that gets you on Oprah. In the memoir market, you've got to have more than truth; you gotta have a hook. The hook here was the serendipitous love story.

I wish Rosenblat had kept the angel alive for his grandchildren instead of trying to cash in on her. I also wish the story of an earth-bound woman who mended the heart of a deeply damaged man could be enough for hungry producers. And I wish there had been angels outside a lot of history's fences. In the cold light of fact, every love has lies in it, every life suffers wrongs that can never be written right. The purpose of memoir is not only to suss out emotional truth and meaning in the actual events, but also to recognize the angel and the liar in each of us. There is a way to tell what really happened and still give voice to what might have been, to what we prayed for or dreamed of. The powerful opportunity to do that here was lost in a fog of greed. This story of love and survivorship is now a saga of squandered resources, the involvement of lawyers, boxes on a loading dock at the destruction warehouse, a writer's worst nightmare.

Every time this happens, it makes me very sad for all involved and scared for the future of memoirs, which (when truly written and properly vetted) hold such healing power for both authors and readers.

Joni's Sunday sermon: God loved me enough to lock me in a bathroom in the Hollywood Hills.

My life has been excessively strange lately. In the course of working my memoir guru mojo for a truly delightful client, I’ve made the acquaintance of an important (iconic, really) writer/producer who has for some odd reason decided that we should be friends. He’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Generous, kind, whipsaw funny, scary smart. (He’s also endearingly geeky. Friday night, while the fireworks were going on, he wanted to tell us about the little known history of the Declaration of Independence, and tragically, I was geeky enough to want to hear it.)

I enjoy conversing with him, but his famousness is weird. Distracting. Intimidating. Every time I say his name, I’m reminded that he’s this intimidating famous guy, so I’ve taken to calling him “Studs Mulligan”.

Friday, since the 4th was my client's only day off this millennium, Mulligan hosted the final read-through of the manuscript at his place – an ultra-moderne but not grossly huge house on a hill overlooking LA. It’s the squarest, hippest, whitest, cleanest house I’ve ever been in. The sparse bachelor pad furnishings are complimented with typical mega-star knick-knacks, my favorite being a Gibson Les Paul autographed by Amie Mann.

My client, her assistant, my daughter (who’s been working as my assistant), and I arrived at noon to find the kitchen stocked with beverages, treats, and a deli-catered lunch spread. I distributed manuscripts, and I’d had one printed for Mulligan, but he respectfully withdrew to his office, wanting to give my client the time and space she needed to speak freely.

During the first six hours of reading and notes, he joined us only when invited to hear one particular chapter or another. (He’s filled in major gaps in my understanding of the world of television, and I wanted him to reality check me on those chapters.) My client, a boundless ball of energy, wanted to blaze on to the end, and even though I’d been working without stop since 4 AM in order to have the manuscripts ready, I was prepared to accommodate her. We both insisted we were good to go, but Mulligan gently insisted we take a 30 minute break. My client and the girls went for a swim. I went to a chaise in a shady corner and was asleep about three seconds later. At the end of the 30 minutes, my daughter woke me up, and I went to take a quick whiz before resuming the read-through.

The nearest of the five bathrooms in Mulligan’s house is just off the space age kitchen. I went in and locked the door, and for some reason found myself utterly unable to pee. Something about the square fixtures, the shininess of the hardware, or the whiteness of everything – I don’t know. It’s ridiculous. I just suddenly realized I was about to be bare-assed on the john in this incredibly famous dude’s house. I’d been drinking one water bottle after another. For six hours. I seriously needed to pee. I turned on the water in the Star Trekish sink to see if that would help.

No. Couldn’t do it.

I finally decided the best thing for me to do would be to go out and say that I’d forgotten something at my hotel, which was only five minutes away. I’d run over there, use the comfortably middle class facility, dash back to Mulligan’s, and continue the read-through without consuming another drop of liquid. I hitched up my jeans, rinsed my hands, and wiped them on my pants rather than touch the pristine white towels. But when I tried to open the door…

It wouldn’t open.

I clicked the little space age locky deal in and out a couple times. Bent down and gandered at the chrome knob. All I saw was my own sheepish face reflecting back at me. I squinted at the locking mechanism, which was like a skinny little pin. I pulled at it, and heard a small click. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned the knob. The door did not open. The little lock pin, which probably cost more than my car, plinked onto the floor like a bullet casing.

“Shit!” said my reflection, and I agreed.

I heard my daughter’s voice in the kitchen, and I hissed her name a few times, but she drifted back out to the lanai, laughing with my client’s assistant. I jiggled and toggled and worked at the door knob for what seemed like a very long time. Then I started laughing, and then I realized there was no way I was going to make it back to my hotel to pee even if I were to get the dang door open and sprint for the rental car this very second.

The ridiculousness of it! For crying out loud.

I dropped trou, took care of whiz biz, washed my hands, and dried them on the towel hospitably offered for that purpose. I decided that before I swallowed what was left of my dignity and started yelling for help, I'd give the door knob one more try. Click. The door opened as easy as you please.

Back out on the lanai, I set the lock pin on the table next to Mulligan's hand.

“I broke your house,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“Nah, it does that. You have to kinda go like crr-chk-a-chkk.” He demonstrated with sound effects. “Use the one off the music room.”

My client and I read on while he went out and fetched Italian food. I read to the table while everyone else ate, then Mulligan took a chapter while I ate. I resumed reading to the end, which left my client in tears.

With the task of the book behind me (other than a few small clean-up items), I’m thinking ahead to my next project. When Mulligan suggested I should “come over to the dark side” and try screenwriting, I said, “That’s just not my world. I’m a book person.” But this morning, I woke up wondering why I’ve set such arbitrary (and stupid) boundaries in my life. Some destuctive little part of me is telling me I’m out of my league. It’s singing that old bluegrass song, “Don’t Git Above Your Raisin’”.

Getting locked in that bathroom was a blessing. It slapped a leash on me just as I was about to take flight, which would have been an idiotic waste of time in the middle of a hardworking day. And it would have reinforced the utterly wrong idea that I could not function on the most basic level in what was, for this day at least, my workplace. Nothing about Mulligan’s house – or Mulligan himself – could have possibly been more welcoming. The only thing telling me I didn’t belong there was my own insecurity. I don’t have time for that crap. (No pun intended.) I need to be able to function comfortably wherever my work is. That means being able to use a hole-in-the-ground outhouse in rural France or a Frank Lloyd Wright toiletron in Hollywood as unfussily as I use the loo off my own kitchen (which is, by the way, wallpapered with pages from my first novel).

I can’t describe what it meant to me to have someone understand and honor the emotional journey of this book. It’s possible that Mulligan was just trying to score points with my client, whom he adores with schoolboy blue devotion, but whatever his motives, the experience was wonderful for me. Finishing a book is a big deal. I’ve always felt a bit of an ache as I honor that alone. This is the first time the celebration was even close to being in balance with the enormity of the journey.

After I read the final chapter, Mulligan poured wine, raised a toast to my client and I, and gave us both roses. Then we all sat around the fire pit shooting the bull. Lively conversation covered everything from Cyrano de Bergerac to Barak Obama. Watching the far off fireworks, I felt that click that tells you you’re in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

The world I belong in is writing. Everywhere it takes me is home.