Wednesday, October 25th, at 6:30 PM
Please join us on October 25th at 6:30 PM for An Evening with Susannah Kennedy, author of Reading Jane
ABOUT THE BOOK
Outwardly, Jane presented a charismatic personality—opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful. Susannah is her beautiful only daughter, her intended protégé. But then Jane at 75 years old, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, insisting it is best for everyone this way.
Susannah is left with 45 years of her mother’s diaries. For a year, Susannah reads, twisting and turning to the truths she uncovers, comparing what she remembers against the strange pull of her mother’s public tale. This process is accompanied by physical symptoms, each memory encased in her body. And then she uncovers yet another secret, one that redefines her mother forever. At last Susannah is able to separate, heal and embrace her own story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India and raised in the United States. Later, she traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before becoming a reporter in Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. She and her psychoanalyst husband lived and worked in Germany, raising three children in a thatched-roof farmhouse in the countryside outside Hamburg. Her mother’s suicide and its aftermath brought them back to Santa Cruz, California in 2017. They now reside in Marin County in California. Susanna has an extensive network of friends and family throughout the United States and Europe and is traveling for book events this Fall along the East Coast.
