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A Good Enough Daughter

Published by Random House's Schocken Books in 1999, this memoir, says The Boston Globe, is "an unusually painstaking look at what you get from your family--what they give, what you take, what comes to you by luck, what by choice, what you have to reject, and what you can reclaim if you are lucky."

Decades after fleeing the loving middle-class home of her youth, when her aging parents grow frail and need her, Alix returns to care for them. As she dismantles their house of forty years, revisiting her childhood and uncovering family secrets, she finally learns how to be a good enough daughter. Far from the burden she expected, her new devotion turns out to be an exhilarating blessing, even as she sees her parents, at age 89 and 95, out of this world.

Praise for A GOOD ENOUGH DAUGHTER:

"Shulman takes on the most daunting of challenges a contemporary memoirist can face—a happy childhood and a loving set of parents—and brings it off triumphantly in this uniquely wise, perceptive, bittersweet, and emotionally satisfying book."
—Phillip Lopate

“Profound, loving, and universal.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Fascinating. . . Shulman's reflective memoir proves well worth pondering as we confront the role reversals we ourselves will face--if we don't already.”
—Newsday

“Refreshingly upbeat, infused with insight, affection, and respect.”
—NY Times Book Review

Photo: Susan Wittenberg