Nancy Miller's Family Detective Story

Although Nancy Miller calls this book a memoir, it is in many ways more a family detective story, tracking a set of clues back into the past and across the globe. Or, perhaps better, it exemplifies how writing a memoir can move an author onto the openly shifting grounds of memory, where her own need — she’s “starved for stories”— is revealed and explored. On those shifting grounds, the fragmentary and uncertain nature of “a Jewish past” also becomes visible.