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The fractured structure of Joan Wexler's haunting memoir replicates the author's lifelong challenge to make sense of a life that seemed to defy the construction of a coherent narrative. Relationships were always mutable, as was the definition of “home,” and even as she writes her story she notes that it still “almost seems dangerous to try to make sense of things” (p. 113).
The story begins in medias res, when, in 2008, the author picks up the search for her long-missing father. As if looking over her shoulder at the computer screen, we see the “blurry facsimile of his death certificate” come into view, and perhaps catch our breath as she must have done (p. 2). This public record turns out to provide some precious, if sparse, factual information, but raises new unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, questions.
The first such question, as Wexler tries to obtain an official copy of the document, is that of her “relationship to the deceased.” That in fact is a central question of the book and of the author's life—the definition of relationship. Wexler's father, dead ten years by the time she saw his death certificate, last lived with her when she was two. She has a few memories of visits during the next three years, before, she writes early in the book, “all contact with him ended. There were no letters, no birthday cards, no photographs, and no child support” (p. 3). This summary is at odds with an episode recounted later, illustrating the ongoing difficulty of forming a single account that can encompass all of the relevant information. In fact, she tracked her father down when she was a senior in college (having discovered that he lived not far from her) and spent an afternoon with