Book: Annie's Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg

A Journey into a Family Secret

This book was chosen by the Michigan Humanities Council as the 2013-2014 Great Michigan Read and was a Michigan notable book for 2010.

In 1995, Steve Luxenberg gets a telephone call from his step-sister one day asking if he knew his mom had a sister. No, he didn't and, although his mother was living, he never asked her about this. Beth Luxenberg died in 1999 with her secret intact, or at least she thought so.

But Steve was shocked and disturbed and spent the next several years learning what he could about his mother's sister, his aunt. He begins researching...

"On a bleak day in March, I visit the National Archives and the Library of Congress to make a list of every family living on the same block as Mom and Annie in the 1930s, using census records and Detroit city directories."

Her name was Annie Cohen, and this fascinating book is Steve's tribute to her, as he makes his way to as much truth as he can. Annie's story is mostly a very sad one. She was born to Tillie and Hyman Cohen in Detroit in 1919. The family was Jewish, although they weren't especially observant. Still, they lived in a community of other Jewish immigrants and their relatives were Jewish, so it was inevitable that Steve also hears stories of the Holocaust as he finds his way deeper and deeper into his family history. He meets and talks to friends and family members all over the country. Many possible sources were no longer living, but he learns enough to piece together Annie's life, and finds out she was committed to Eloise, (formerly known as the Wayne County House and Asylum) when she was 21 years old. Beth (or Bertha before she changed her name), was two years older than Annie.

Annie was born with a deformed leg which was eventually amputated. She was also noted to be (in today's terminology) cognitively challenged, although there remains some question as to the degree. When she reached puberty, she became increasingly troubled. Tillie and Hyman were poor, lacking the confidence and education to be an advocate for their daughter, and she was committed to a mental hospital where she remained institutionalized until she died 32 years later.

This book, then, is a tale of what has changed in treating the mentally ill and those with cognitive deficits. Annie certainly would not have had the dismal life she had were she living today. Steve was eventually able to gain access to much of Annie's sparse and spotty paper trail which only supports how little was needed to commit someone in the early 20th century.

The book also is about his mother and why she kept Annie a secret. It is to his credit that he loves her unconditionally. He does not judge her. This wasn't so for some (and me actually) who knew Beth when she was a young woman and who knew that she never talked about or visited or acknowledged her sister. Beth was vivacious, romantic and above all determined to not let the fact of her unfortunate sister affect her future. So she ignored Annie for the rest of her life. Not even her husband knew, a man with whom she fell in love first time she saw him. Steve remembers his parents as good, hard-working and caring, much like most of the post-war parents of that era. But he also learns other secrets as he talks to relatives and friends and reads reports.

Definitely a book for discussion….