Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Episode 1

When I sat down to watch Boardwalk Empire last night, I didn't expect to find my own story, too.

Like Jimmy, my father, was a bootlegger during Prohibition.
Like Jimmy my dad, Louis Rosen, was murdered in a turf war with the Mafia.

And like Jimmy, he left a child—me-- at the age of two.

Watching Tommy's confusion and loss last night, I was reminded of the feelings I had when my father suddenly disappeared. Although I had a mother, and Tommy was orphaned, it was as if I was orphaned, too--my mother disappeared frequently into her new llfe as a partying flapper. And when I was old enough to ask her how my father died she told me he died of pneumonia. As Tommy, I lived in a world of adults hiding the truth.

I discovered the facts about my father's life and death at the age of 12, when my older brother told me I could read about him in the newspapers of the time. So I went to the Cleveland Public Library and found his story on the ten-year old pages of The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Cleveland Press in huge headlines and graphic pictures.   

Boardwalk Empire is an entertaining TV series that viewers enjoy, turn off and forget about until the next Sunday night. But for me, the story doesn't stop; it stays with me, lingering, haunting my dreams.

Secrets

 I was an infant when my bootlegging father, and innocent uncle were murdered in my father’s turf war with the Mafia.

When I was old enough to ask my mother about my daddy, she told me that he died of pneumonia and never acknowledged my uncle’s existence. I think I knew even at three or four years old that she was lying.

So at the age of 18, I began a search for the truth. I read old newspapers in the Cleveland Public Library that described the murders in screaming headlines. I asked questions of surviving relatives and researched a book about the Jewish Orphanage where my mother grew up from the time she was 3 years old until she graduated at 15. The book, “Inside Looking Out” provided a  profusion of information about the orphanage in 1900 to 1915 during my mother’s time, that was like something out of Dickens. I read the family history my older brother wrote, who remembered the night of the murders--the police, the reporters, the neighbors, the screams of our mother and aunt.

Part catharsis and part an author’s recognition of a good story, I wanted to write a book about my family. I also wanted to protect its secrets. Which meant that it had to be a novel.

 But for the first time in my life I had writer’s block. Draft after draft filled my wastebasket but, I finally I got it. It was as if there was some voice within me, or in the air, or somewhere, that said simply, "It’s time for the truth to come out of the shadows."

 I started over. As if truth has an intimate power and life force, the words now flowed as in a dream. And my memoir, LOST AND FOUND was born.

When the book was published, I went on a publicity tour and got a huge surprise. Each time I spoke to a group there were always two or three people who would pull me aside and tell me THEIR family secrets. Listening, I felt released from my feelings of shame and isolation and connected to others in a new and dynamic way. It was like opening a window into fresh clean air.

HOW TO WRITE YOUR LIFE, Part Two

As long as you’re not hurting anyone who is still alive, reveal family secrets. It is what your children and grandchildren want to know, it will bring your story to life and it can be an important cathartic experience for you.

            Martha Norman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, writes, “Every family has something they don’t want to talk about. In my family it was epilepsy and suicide. In other families it’s violence, or depression, or stupidity, or sex, or money, or even genius.The human condition can probably be defined as the stuff families won’t talk about.”

            In my very own family, it was murder. Or murders. My bootlegging father and my uncle (who was innocent and just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time} were murdered by the Mafia in a turf war during Prohibition.

            I was an infant at the time, and when I became old enough to ask Mother about my father’s death, she told me he died of pneumonia. To the end of her life, she was unable to tell me the truth, and it remained a tightly held secret within the entire family.

            After my mother died, I researched my father’s life and death and wrote about the secret in my memoir, Lost And Found. When the book was published, to my surprise, it was received with compassion and fascination by my family and my readers (who often took me aside at book signings to tell me their family secrets. And I experienced first-hand the liberating, life-changing, power of the truth.