Cornelia Maude Spelman
Missing: A Memoir
Kathleen Hill
Who Occupies This House
Hailed by Alex Kotlowitz as “memoir writing at its absolute finest,” Spelman’s memoir of her mother’s life was inspired by a conversation with a college friend of both of her parents, celebrated New Yorker editor, William Maxwell. With the pacing of a mystery novel, Spelman uses letters, family interviews, medical bills, and telegrams to reconstruct a life and unravel the mysteries of her family. Kathleen Hill’s novel, Who Occupies This House, is a lyrically fictionalized recreation of a family’s history. Of the book, writer Joan Silber raves, “This is a novel of great beauty. Step by step it works its way deep into the interior lives of vanished family, sifting through evidence to solve mysteries, rejudge sorrows, and think, over and over, about forgiveness.”
