This is a story of three generations of deeply rooted family secrets; of a Southern Jewish family with the complex love between sisters & parents & some memories that may at last be explained.
The Slow Way Back starts with a resounding slap as ten year old Thea, trying on her mother's wedding dress, is discovered. Right there you know something's up.
In this deeply moving story of a woman's search for her roots, for a sense of belonging her sister has, which seems to have eluded her, we meet Thea & her husband in their companionable, childless marriage. We meet Mickey, her younger sister & their father's favorite.
We see a chasm develop between the siblings as mother & father by some unspoken cue, divvy up their girls. Father has Mickey & ignores Thea while mother dotes on Thea to the exclusion of Mickey.
After the sisters' mother's sister has a stroke, she sends Thea a bundle of letters from her mother's Yiddish-writing mother to her sister. Thea finds a local professor who can translate the faded letters & she now has the opportunity to lift the lid off the tightly closed box from their past.
Clues have been everywhere yet seem to add up to nothing that makes sense. Meanwhile Thea begins to reevaluate her childless & secular marriage looking at her sister's religious & childfull marriage for answers.
Together these sisters have gone through a host of dangers - parents aging & dying, children born & raised, the last of the relatives almost ready to depart, without ever really getting to know each other. Then, one day, Thea calls Mickey with some worrying news only to find Mickey's got some of her own.
Over a matter of weeks, with silences due to family matters, the professor sends Thea translations of the letters. Unless you knew the hints, the references, you'd never suspect. Thea pleads for her aunt to clarify the clues. The aunt is adamant in her oath to keep it all secret.
Thea knows she needs to look again at her life - why she's always felt different, why her choices have always seemed different. It isn't until the last letter arrives with its obvious references that her aunt breaks down & tells her the story behind the letters. Thea's life comes unraveled.
As The Slow Way Back meanders between past & present. Between the troubles of their health & the mysteries of their past, these two sisters begin to find each other yet before reconciliation can be had, time runs out.
In the end, Thea's redemption comes with finally knowing what made her different. At last being able to forgive her parents & their marriage & it is out of that knowledge & destruction of all those secrets that she can truly be herself.
Coming up in a family that kept secrets, hinting at them in a form of blackmail, I found The Slow Way Back a fascinating modern read! Well done!
(04/16/00)
Rebecca
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