MY MOTHER’S GHOST
By Fergus M. Bordewich
Doubleday, 326 pages, $23.95
Fergus M. Bordewich begins “My Mother’s Ghost,” his excruciating remembrance of his mother’s sudden, gruesome death and the shadow it cast over his life, with such vigor that, within a few dozen pages, the reader is breathless, certain it would be impossible for Bordewich to maintain such a pace for the length of the book.
The reader is wrong.
Bordewich’s pace remains as steady as his unflinching journalist’s eye as he recounts his own remarkable life, then sets about dismantling the myths of his ancestors in an effort to exorcise his mother’s ghost.
Bordewich’s mother, LaVerne Madigan, is a progressive woman who earns a degree in classics from New York University in the 1930s; works to relocate interned Japanese-Americans during the second world war; and leads a national aid agency, the Association of American Indian Affairs, during the 1950s and ’60s. She is brilliant, charismatic and the idol of her 14-year-old son. Then one day, as they ride together on vacation, Bordewich’s mother attempts to dismount from a runaway horse and falls to her death.
“My Mother’s Ghost” then offers a detailed, objective account of Bordewich’s remarkable life. As a college student, he faces down the Ku Klux Klan while serving as a civil rights worker in Virginia.
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As a college dropout, he wanders across America, Europe and Asia, encountering adventure and opportunity, writing and selling his work. As a depressed cab driver in New York, he brings himself back from the brink of alcoholism. All the while, he carries the precious, leaden memory of his infallible mother.
As he comes to grips with his tragedy as an adult, Bordewich decides to disarm painful memories through exhaustive research. He sets about discovering the true facts of his mother’s life, burrowing through documents and conducting interviews as he would on any other journalistic endeavor.
The lessons of “My Mother’s Ghost” are many. It speaks of the power of death and memory, of will and chance, of hope and understanding. Though the book is deeply depressing in parts, readers will find themselves torn between urging Bordewich to set himself free to embrace life, and empathizing with his need to hold onto the remnants of what he cherishes.