Missing: A Memoir by Cornelia Maude Spelman
Memoir, 176 pages
Published July 15, 2022 by by Jackleg Press
Acclaimed children’s book author Cornelia Maude Spelman’s memoir of her family springs from a meeting and subsequent friendship with the late, legendary New Yorker editor William Maxwell. In the 1920s, he and her parents had been friends as undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When Spelman hints at what she thinks of as the failure of her parents’ lives, he counters that “in a good novel one doesn’t look for a success story, but for a story that moves one with its human drama and richness of experience.”
At their final meeting, Maxwell encourages her to tell her mother’s story. Missing is Spelman’s response to Maxwell’s wisdom. With the pacing of the mystery novels her mother loved, and using everything from letters and interviews to the family’s quotidian paper trail—medical records, telegrams, and other oft-overlooked clues to a family’s history—Spelman reconstructs her mother’s life and untimely death. Along the way, she unravels mysteries of her family, including the fate of her long lost older brother.
Spelman skillfully draws the reader into the elation and sorrow that accompany the discovery of a family’s past. A profoundly loving yet honest elegy, Missing is, like the woman it memorializes, complex and beautiful.
My thoughts about Missing ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First line—"When I was growing up, I'd heard William Maxwell's name spoken with respect that Pop reserved for very few people."
I used to read a lot of biographies and autobiographies but have not read them since my much younger years. It was kind of nice to pick one up again and read a captivating story about an interesting person who was able to track down a lot of information about her family.
I was not familiar with Cornelia Maude Spelman or any of her work before reading this book. She has written a number of children's books that help them get through emotional, tough times. At some point she decided to delve into the lives of her family, in particular her mother, who lived a hard life and died an untimely death.
There were plenty of questions surrounding the whole family over the years and I was struck by how lucky the author was to be able to find so much information about her mother and the past generations of her family. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to have so much information available when they start researching their family.
Missing was a very enjoyable story that was easy to get caught up in as the author dissected the different personalities and issues within the family.
I received an ARC of Missing and this is my honest opinion.
"Memoir Writing at its Absolute Finest."
Cornelia Spelman's gentle, lyrical prose belies the haunting nature of her story, a searing, honest search for the lost pieces of her family's story. Missing is a book that both comforts and astounds. It's memoir writing at its absolute finest. ─Alex Kotlowitz
A long, intimate journey; the very honest accounting of the way old pain works its way through the generations. One of the fascinations of the whole story comes from the vicarious satisfaction of seeing someone who actually does discover every bit of what is still discoverable, and then who dares to speculate with candor about how it all fits together, not to mention how it's affected her. ─Rosellen Brown
About the author
Cornelia Maude Spelman, MSW, is a writer, artist, and former therapist who writes about emotions and relationships. Her memoir Missing, about her search for her mother's past, is now in paperback.
Cornelia has been writing a daily diary for 35 years, and is presently writing Volume 250. Her diaries (closed until 2070), her mother’s teen-age diaries; family photos, letters, and papers (open for researchers), are being archived at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, Massachusetts
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu
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