Assembling My Father : A Daughter's Detective Story

In 1974, when Anna Cypra Oliver was five years old, her father put a gun to his head and killed himself. That shot has haunted her all her life. Obsessed by the need to learn who he was and why he died, she set out on a journey of discovery, following the clues he had scattered during his brief lifetime. Assembling My Father is her extraordinary chronicle of that journey. Strikingly original, it is a stunning mosaic of eloquent language and memorable images — photographs, journal entries, even doodles, the poignant artifacts that are part of the record of his life. Lewis Weinberger, Anna’s father, the product of an affluent and cultivated Jewish background, married a vibrant girl with strong avant-garde leanings. Drawn to the counterculture, they made their way to Taos, New Mexico. There, in the chaos and disorder of hippie life, their marriage foundered, a devastating blow to Lewis and the beginning of his drug-saturated disintegration. After his suicide, Anna’s mother, born Jewish, became an ardent Christian fundamentalist, taking up with a series of rough-edged, sometimes violent men. This was the world of Anna’s childhood, indelibly delineated here. A fascinating personal memoir, Oliver’s story is also that of a turbulent era that, for better and for worse, changed the world.

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