My Dead Parents

A haunting, unforgettable family story about hidden secrets and a daughter's journey to understand her parents Anya Yurchyshyn grew up in a narrow townhouse in Boston, every corner filled with the souvenirs of her parents' adventurous international travels. On their trips to Africa, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, her mother, Anita, and her father, George, lived an entirely separate life from the one they led as the parents of Anya and her sister – one that Anya never saw. The parents she knew were a brittle, manipulative alcoholic and a short-tempered disciplinarian: people she imagined had never been in love. When she was sixteen, Anya's father was killed in a car accident in Ukraine. At thirty-two, she became an orphan when her mother drank herself to death. As she was cleaning out her childhood home, she suddenly discovered a trove of old letters, photographs, and journals hidden in the debris of her mother's life. These lost documents told a very different...