Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
My essay, “Can Death Be Brought to Life?” was published in the August 2023 issue of SPILL IT! Based on my work as an end-of-life doula, the essay describes how death, once a daily fact of life, has become a “forbidden” subject of conversation and asks whether, and how, death might be reclaimed as a normal part of life. Read more at ESSAYS and learn about my work with those facing death at END-OF-LIFE DOULA.
Restoring our acceptance of death
“Nazi leaders began to persecute Jews as soon as Hitler took power in 1933. I was a college professor when they issued the Nuremberg Race Laws prohibiting Jews from teaching in or attending public schools. I gave private lessons, usually for no fee, until I was sent to Buchenwald. After we were liberated, I was offered a position at an American university. My colleagues sent a briefcase as a welcoming gift.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.
Nuremberg Race Laws banned Jewish teachers and students
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
My Amazon and Goodreads review of Take What You Need by Idra Novey (Rating 5) – It’s Complicated. I was hooked at the book’s first line: “This morning, I read that repeating the name of the deceased can quiet the mind when grieving for a complicated person.” Take What You Need by Idra Novey is the story of a difficult relationship, told from the alternating perspectives of Leah, a young woman, and her recently deceased stepmother Jean, who left when Leah was ten and from whom she is estranged. Jean is a magnetic character who inspires both admiration and distaste, an artist obsessed with sculpting massive towers (“manglements”) which she welds from scrap metal, old photos, and other salvaged materials. Jean literally dies for her art, falling from a ladder while reaching for the top of one of her towers. Leah travels to the tiny, decaying house and town in northern Appalachia where Jean was born and died, trying to come to terms with the disruption between that first decade of love followed by sudden abandonment. In Jean’s back story, readers hear her aching need to restore their connection and the multiple ways in which Jean, an artistic visionary with emotional blind spots, repeatedly screws up every attempt. We also discover, along with Leah, that in mourning those with whom we had an uneasy relationship, we can come to acknowledge the good without invalidating the bad. Jean had an open heart that invited everyone, even society’s castoffs, to take what they needed, while being insensitive to the person who needed her most. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I applaud Novey’s ability to draw characters who are at once unlikable and sympathetic. As one among many who have struggled with ambivalent feelings about those we’ve have lost, I appreciate how Take What You Need gives grieving readers permission to let conflicting emotions dwell alongside each other.
A journey to resolve conflicting feelings for the deceased
Why writers read: “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” – George R. R. Martin
As a woman and amputee, American Virginia Hall was not expected to succeed at espionage during WW2. Yet operating under 20 different code names, with an artificial leg, she gathered intelligence, rescued fellow agents, eluded double-crossing informants, and helped organized the French resistance. While the U.S. failed to end WW2 sooner or admit those fleeing Nazi persecution, history shows some courageous Americans spoke out and saved lives. Read about a German Jewish family who tries to escape to the U.S. in the novel One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.
Virginia Hall’s feats as a WWII spy are only being belatedly recognized
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn before the Nazi slaughter begins
More of my microfiction was published in 50 Give or Take. “Wrinkles of Disappointment” was prompted by a remark my daughter made about the “disappointed” face of a woman in a theater lobby where we were attending a performance. Sign up to receive and submit your own ultra-short stories, free, at 50 Give or Take.
Faces carry our life histories
Daily microfiction in your inbox
“We were marched from the ghetto to Plaszow. Children were not allowed, but some people smuggled them in big ruck sacks. When the Gestapo saw them, they said they’d set up a nursery in the camp. Two weeks later, an open lorry with the children drove off and was never seen again. And that’s how those parents lost their children, with a trick that they’d be looked after.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.
Children and the elderly weren’t allowed to survive at camp
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter
A new book, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester looks at how we transfer knowledge without quite saying what knowledge is. However, reviewing the book for The New York Times, Peter Sagal (host of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me), says “one workable definition night be: information that gives pleasure, arouses curiosity and widens, if only by a small fraction, one’s appreciation of the vast world beyond one’s immediate vision.” My maternal grandmother Mindel used to say (in Yiddish) whenever she learned something new, “I’m glad I didn’t die yesterday or I wouldn’t have known that.” So, Sagal’s apt definition is consistent with the Mindel Moments I share in my monthly ASE Writer Newsletter. (Want to get the newsletter? Email me via CONTACT US and I’ll add you to the list.) I delight in the initial discovery (gives pleasure) and do research to learn more (arouses curiosity). Even the smallest tidbit triggers the “Wow!” factor (widens appreciation). I would add that knowledge is more than cognitive (or intellectual). Knowledge can also be emotional, spiritual, esthetic, sensory, somatic, and so on. I’m grateful that the world’s knowledge exceeds what I can learn in one lifetime. Mindel possessed more than knowledge; my grandmother also had wisdom.
Knowledge takes may forms, can be transmitted in multiple ways, and elicits many reactions
My Amazon and Goodreads review of Chicken Dinner News by Jeff Billington (Rating 5) – To Flee or Not To Flee? Chicken Dinner News by Jeff Billington is a small tale that poses questions as big and existential as Hamlet’s “To be or not to be?” What makes a life meaningful? How do we contribute to progress while honoring the past? What does it mean to love not just one person but an entire place? After the death of a grandfather he barely knew, Californian Ryan Shipley finds himself the owner of a newspaper in a dying Missouri town, farmland just outside the town, and half the stately old buildings — all decaying — in the town itself. Taking a leave from his job as a copy editor, Ryan heads to White Oak City to sell it all, leave the family history behind, and return to his “real” life in Los Angeles. Instead he finds himself torn between escaping and staying, enamored by the town’s charms (albeit irritated by its prejudices), awed by images of its erstwhile grandeur, and boosted by his own abilities to write, edit, and raise the level of the paper, heretofore a vehicle for reporting news about community events, such as chicken dinners (hence the title). Throw in a romance, a legacy to live up to, and people hoping Ryan will be their savior, and you have the struggle at the heart of this heartfelt novel. Billington persuades readers to slow down and linger in an evocative setting with characters who defy stereotypes. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Billington’s talent for crafting mini-dramas that illuminate meta-issues. Chicken Dinner News invites readers to assess the value of their own communities, regardless of size, and establish their place in it.
Taking big steps to help a small town survive
Why writers read: “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney