Reading Copy Book Blog

I’m sure you recall the resulting ruckus when it was revealed that James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces wasn’t quite as non-fiction as an autobiographical account should be.

But here’s a flip side to that tarnished coin - an author who writes a true account of his life only to discover that what he has been told by his family has been a lie and therefore, his memoirs aren’t an accurate account of his life and family history. Haunted by the error that was penned through no fault of his own, he wants to set the record straight.

Don J. Snyder, author of 5 novels,  wrote  Of Time and Memory: My Parent’s Love Story,  his memoirs rooted in the pivotal event of  his 19-year-old mother’s death 16 days after giving birth to Snyder and his twin brother back in 1950.

Things changed however when Snyder received a photograph from his father, who was suffering from dementia.  His father had sent a wedding photograph to his son, except the bride wasn’t the woman that Snyder and his twin had grown up knowing to be their mother. It was a woman that they knew nothing about but who turned out to be their birth mother.

Peggy Schwartz  had died from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy and in order to protect the boys from the idea that they had caused their mother’s death, the family did their best to wipe out all traces of Peggy’s existence. The family doctor kept the truth a secret because he felt that Peggy’s choice to save her sons’ lives over her own meant she chose her babies over her husband and he wanted to spare Snyder’s father any more pain.

While Of Time and Memory is critically acclaimed, Snyder’s editor at Knopf says the publisher wouldn’t consider a revised edition of the book stating that sales of the book were modest. Makes you wonder if the truth only matters if your book is endorsed by Oprah, doesn’t it?!

Snyder isn’t planning on writing a revised memoir. He’s telling the truth through a new media - film. He plans to take the draft of his screenplay to Hollywood this month. Hopefully someone will let him correct the mistakes he inadvertently made.

Don Snyder knew nothing about his mother aside from the terrible fact that she died at the age of nineteen, just sixteen days after giving birth to him and his twin brother. All his life Don had been too shy, too deeply pained to ask his father or grandparents to tell him the story of the lovely girl named Peggy Snyder–what delighted or troubled her, who her friends were, how she fell in love, what cut short her brief life.

But then, nearing his fiftieth birthday and compelled by his father’s failing health, Snyder embarked on a quest to find his mother. He traveled many times from his home in Maine down to his mother’s small Pennsylvania town to trace her childhood and adolescence. He tracked down Peggy’s high school friends, spent time with her teachers, probed the memories of the girls–now elderly women– who had been her bridesmaids. Detail by detail, Don pieced together the harrowing story of Peggy’s final year–her passionate love affair with her husband, the unexpected pregnancy, the sudden illness that consumed her, and the impossible choice she was forced to make.

A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering–and reclaiming–the fragile mystery of a beloved life.