ANNA AND DAREL

McConkey lovingly chronicles the lives of his parents, an intellectually vibrant couple who lived through tumultuous times.

The author’s parents Darel and Anna were both intellectually and culturally vital eccentrics: “Books, classical music, and solving the affairs of the universe drew them together.” In 1913, then only 8 years old, Darel decided he wanted to be a writer, and he would write and edit professionally for the bulk of his life, including work for the WPA Writer’s Project. Born in Holland, Anna was a teacher and managed the 132-acre farm they owned for a while in Virginia, even though she couldn’t, out of fear, drive a car. Both of them lived through two world wars and the Depression, and they were passionate about world affairs. Then, disaster descended upon them: In 1961, Darel died—he was only 55 at the time; the author was 17. Suddenly, after 30 years out of the job market, Anna was compelled to seek employment and help lift the family out of the considerable debt under which it was buried. In this thoughtful double-biography, an endearing love letter to his parents, McConkey paints vivid character portraits of Darel and Anna, two people worthy of literary depiction. He colorfully limns the turbulent times as well, events that gripped these politically minded people, though he concedes the historical depictions are threadbare and really only in the service of the memoir. (“No book can recapture but a shaving of a life’s real panorama.”) The author’s remembrance can be idiosyncratically personal, so much so that it almost reduces the work to an essentially private document, one best appreciated by those who knew his parents. However, Darel and Anna fully lived the times they were so engaged in, and the author captures this so deftly that their lives bloom into universal resonance.

A moving homage to a unique pair of parents.