FINDING MY FATHER: His Century-Long Journey From World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow
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In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers’ compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father’s—and her own—relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined.
Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen’s life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.
“Eli Tannen’s century-spanning Jewish American life is well worth reading about.” —Washington Post
“An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary….” —The Forward
“...The ultimate recognition of her father’s painful need for connection is searing, the depiction of the Jewish community in World War I-era Warsaw riveting. Not only does Ms. Tannen’s heartfelt portrait keep her father—and his memories—alive, but her story also hints at the undiscovered currents that may await us, too, if we but delve beneath the surface of our own family myths.” —Wall Street Journal
Watch Deborah Tannen’s interview with Susan Stamberg about Finding My Father
other books by deborah tannen
read deborah tannen's Recent Essays in The Washington Post,
the new york times & the Forward
The Washington Post, “My father was once hard to reach. As he aged, the words began to flow.”
The New York Times, “How I Finally Got to Know My Father by Asking About His Past”
The Forward, “After WWI, Jewish Warsaw crumbled; in my father’s memories, it lived on”