THE ROPE OF LIFE

A daughter’s exploration of her father’s life and his battles with mental health.

In this poignant memoir written decades after her father’s death by suicide, Kossoff explores his life “from the heart and soul of the girl I once was, through the lens of the woman I have become.” A cocky Jewish New Yorker and pilot during World War II, Hugh Kossoff married a fundamentalist Southern Baptist and attended dental school in Baltimore, then moved to North Carolina, where a sham test administered by the state’s Board of Dental Examiners failed him because “they didn’t want another Jew practicing in Winston-Salem.” At that point, Kossoff’s young family moved across the border to Danville, Virginia. In a city with a small Jewish population and a local country club that denied membership to Jews, Kossoff (who had converted to Christianity before marrying the author’s mother) became a deacon in a local fundamentalist Baptist church. Ever cognizant of the South’s rampant anti-Semitism, he would later have plastic surgery to reduce the size of his prominent nose. Though the author’s goal is to understand the “mystery” and “puzzle” of her often detached father, her recollections are peppered with humorous anecdotes and compelling descriptions of race, religion, and local characters in the 1950s and 1960s South. The juxtaposition of the author’s family tree often makes for a fascinating read. In a single chapter, readers are introduced to Yiddish speaking relatives in the Bronx on one branch while on the other, they meet a Southern cousin whose bedroom is adorned with a Nazi flag and Confederate paraphernalia. The last third of the book details the harrowing physical and mental decline of her father and family secrets uncovered after his death. Kossoff’s struggle to reconcile an idealized image and memory of her father with the harsh realities laid bare in his later years is both heartbreaking and cathartic. Though the particulars of this story are unique, this is a profound memoir that articulates the human struggle to balance innate love of a family member while also acknowledging their complexities and flaws.

A story of a man’s life told through a daughter’s eyes that masterfully balances unvarnished truths with affection.