The A List: 'Annie's Ghosts' selected by ABA

Tracing the Tribe is pleased to learn that Steve Luxenberg's Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret has been honored by the American Booksellers Association.

The ABA selected the book for its A-List for Nonfiction on the Independent Booksellers Fall/Winter List of Recommendations for Reading Groups.

Anyone with a passion for genealogy, family history or journalist will love Annie's Ghosts. No genealogist or journalist could put it down after they began reading it. I read it through at one sitting.

Steve's quest for information - using all his meticulous and investigative journalist's skills to root out the family secret - resulted in a great story. Read more about the book at the author's site here.

Tracing the Tribe wrote about it here.

About the book, the list says:

Every family has a secret. Steve Luxenberg discovers his shortly before his mother dies in her eighties. While she had told everyone throughout his life that she was an only child, his mother actually had a sister who had been institutionalized in her twenties. Luxenberg's journalistic approach to discovering the truth about his aunt is fascinating, as he mines the underlying story of secrets and their effects on families. A great reading group nonfiction pick."

National Genealogical Society president Jan Alpert said this:

“Annie's Ghosts…is a great non-fiction read for genealogists. Steve Luxenberg used the skills he learned as a news reporter to discover all he could about Annie [and the secret]…When you think you have the right family but it doesn't match what you have been told, how do you dig through the layers to find the truth?”

Other books on the list that I enjoyed:

--The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry

--Rooftops of Tehran, Mahbod Seraji

--The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer/Annie Barrows

--The Jewel Trader of Pegu, Jeffrey Hantover

--Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay

Check out all the books on the long list at the main URL above. I find that authors' websites are enlightening, offer backstories and often excerpts as well.