FINDING MY FATHER His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow by Deborah Tannen

Long before Deborah Tannen became a bestselling author and internationally renowned linguist at Georgetown University, she was a young girl who adored her father—profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. In her riveting memoir, FINDING MY FATHER—her most personal and revealing work yet—Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Reading journals he kept as a young man, she uncovers secrets not even she could’ve expected—secrets that force Tannen to rethink her assumptions about her father’s life, her parents’ marriage, and the story she for decades told herself about her parents’ love story. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, Tannen traces her father’s journey: arriving in New York City in 1920 at 12; quitting high school at 14 to support his mother and sister by working in a factory; through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector; to eventually establishing a thriving law practice and running for Congress. Tannen follows her father through the trials of immigration, the Depression, the American Communist and Labor Movements—and the thicket of relations among men, women and sex, so different in his time than in her own. FINDING MY FATHER is a daughter’s stunning labor of love: a tribute to her father and the near century that he lived. But even more, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father more clearly, to know him more deeply, and to unearth a more truthful story about her family—and herself. DEBORAH TANNEN is the acclaimed author of You Just Don’t Understand, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly four years; the New York Times bestsellers You’re Wearing THAT? about mothers and daughters and You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!, about sisters; and many other books. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she is a frequent guest on national television and radio, including 20/20, The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC’s Today, and NPR’s Fresh Air and 1A. She has written for and been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, and Harvard Business Review, among many others. She lives with her husband in the Washington, D.C., area.