Assembling My Father

In the late 1960s, Anna's father, a magnetic man raised in a cultured Jewish family, and her poised mother moved to a countercultural community in Taos, New Mexico. Amid the disorder of hippie life there, their marriage fell apart. Soon after they separated, the father took his own life, leaving Anna at age five.

Two decades later, a handful of old photographs set the author on a single-minded search for the father she barely knew. She gathered a long-forgotten journal, home movies, and a recording of his voice, and she spoke with everyone who had known him.

Rebuilding her father's life changed how she understood him, the upheaval of her childhood, and, ultimately, herself.