Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret »

Steve Luxenberg has been a senior editor with the Washington Post for twenty-two years, overseeing reporting that has won numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory journalism. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Beth Luxenberg was an only child; or so her son Steve believed until his mother, now fragile and almost an octogenarian, told a doctor that she had a disabled sister. Steve was puzzled: If his mother had a sibling, why had her existence been resolutely concealed for decades? His curiosity piqued, Luxenberg activated his journalistic skills to begin a probe into his family's lines. Following the trail took his investigation to Depression-era Detroit and tsarist Russia, Holocaust-plagued Ukraine and the Philippine war zone. Fascinating human interest; a real-life whodunit.

The Washington Post - Barry Werth

…probing, wise and affecting…Luxenberg is an exhaustive, meticulous reporter, and he worries about the things good reporters worry about: making too much of a fact or a connection; the failing memories of his sources, whom he invites to remember conversations and unspoken feelings a half-century old…Beth told her son often that she loved him. Annie's Ghosts is his elegy in return, a poignant investigative exercise, full of empathy and sorrowful truth.

Contents

PROLOGUE: Spring 1995....................1
ONE: Spring 2000....................9
TWO: Looking for Mom....................27
THREE: The Rosetta Stone....................41
FOUR: Unlocking the Door....................57
FIVE: Missing Pieces....................73
SIX: Actually Insane....................91
SEVEN: Welcome to Eloise....................107
EIGHT: I Am Family....................125
NINE: Lost and Found....................141
TEN: Castles in the Air....................157
ELEVEN: The Old Neighborhood....................175
TWELVE: The Cigar Laborer....................191
THIRTEEN: Invisible....................209
FOURTEEN: One of the Thousands....................227
FIFTEEN: The Ghosts of Radziwillow....................247
SIXTEEN: Abandoned....................265
SEVENTEEN: Dad's Secret....................281
EIGHTEEN: Uncontoured Ills....................299
NINETEEN: Always the Bridesmaid....................317
TWENTY: Reinterpretation....................333
EPILOGUE....................351
FAMILY MEMBERS AND RECURRING FIGURES....................359
AUTHOR'S NOTE....................363
NOTES....................365
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................387
INDEX....................393