Wife | Daughter | Self

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What to expect

Wife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics.

Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir—traveling to lakes and rivers, New Mexico and Mexico, the icy waters of Alaska and a hot-air balloon launch in search of understanding. She is accompanied, often, by her Salvadoran-artist husband. She spends time, a lot of time, with her widowed father. As she looks at them she ponders herself and comes to terms with the person she is still becoming. At once sweeping and intimate, Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir built of interlocking essays by an acclaimed author, teacher, and critic.

Critics Review

  • “Kephart deftly and succinctly captures entire expanses of human experience…Kephart’s essays are a joy to read as they reveal a self-aware writer at work and offer new perspectives on how we can experience life.”

    Booklist

  • “A profound meditation on how our most cherished—and most complicated—relationships shape who we are. Kephart’s work is a masterclass in memoir.”

    Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life

  • “A memoir that assembles itself as we read, until all its parts are shimmering with meaning and that most sought, most elusive treasure is revealed: what it means to be human, and aware.”

    Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard is True

  • “She believes in acute, clear-eyed attention to the small moments. Her stories are bare, stripped down, whittled to their very essence, like one of her husband’s dark, pragmatic vessels. To her father, she says, ‘I am here. Are you there?’ In each line of prose she poses the question to us and we answer: Yes, we are. We are here.”

    Jacinda Barrett, actress and writer

  • “This memoir is so revelatory, so affecting, that long after you turn the last page, you won’t stop thinking about it.”

    Judy Goldman, author of Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap

  • “Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir to savor. Beth Kephart is a jeweler: her words glisten, the emotions shine.”

    Diana Abu-Jaber, author of The Language of Baklava

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