This thoughtful work tells the life story of the author's mother, Eleanor Hatkin, a feisty woman who tried to buck tradition and died at 50 of breast cancer nearly three decades ago. "Besides having been my mother, besides having been my father's wife, besides having been someone who died miserably and died young, I did not know who she was," explains Freedman, author of the National Jewish Book Award–winning Jew vs. Jew
. Bothered by the vanishing memories of his dead mother, the author, at 45, set out to reexamine the life of the introspective, witty woman who grew up in a stifling, conservative, Jewish East Bronx home during the 1930s, '40s and '50s. With touching anecdotes supplied by Freedman's relatives and Eleanor's surviving friends, the author relays how Eleanor clashed with her domineering mother, with no support from her dad, "a doting father but a weak man," over issues of love, marriage, education, culture and career. A vivacious, attractive woman, Eleanor had her pick of several beaux, but was denied the love of her life because of his Catholicism and the calculated wrath of her mother. The book's final section shares some deeply captivating moments, with Freedman blending poetry, his own emotions watching his mother's life end, and painstaking detail to create a moving finale. Photos. Agent, Barney Karpfinger. (Apr.)
