Deborah Kasdan—Roll Back the World: A Sister’s Memoir

ROLL BACK THE WORLD: A SISTER’S MEMOIR
Deborah Kasdan
She Writes Press, October 17, 2023
Paperback, $17.95, ebook $9.95
Paperback ISBN: 978-1647425715, eBook ISBN: 9781647425722

Kasdan reports:

When my older sister died in 2003, I felt an overpowering urge to write a book about her. Rachel, a budding poet, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1965 and lived for decades on the margins of society. I knew her as a creative and courageous woman. I wanted other people to know her too.

I delved into cartons of family letters and thousands of pages of hospital records to reconstruct her innumerable admissions, discharges, and re-admissions. I explored diverse viewpoints on the treatment of severe mental illness through a steady diet of reading and webinars. I took a Family-to-Family course with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a course that wasn’t available in the 1970s when my father co-founded the NAMI chapter in St. Louis.

I talked to people who knew Rachel. That included the only mental health worker who was able to see past Rachel’s grave disabilities and help her obtain supportive housing. I learned about the effects of overmedication and involuntary hospitalization and realized how much damage had been inflicted on her.

What I didn’t realize when I started out was how hard it would be to excavate my own feelings. I was working for IBM then and logic was my comfort zone. It took years of personal therapy to sort out my own grief and guilt.

A long-time technology writer, I had never written a book. After I retired in 2015, I attended writing workshops where I learned to relate to readers more personally. I then wove together a braided memoir of three stories: Rachel’s, our family’s, and mine. A freelance book editor helped me shape it further. In 2021, after five agents read and rejected it, I signed a contract with She Writes Press, a hybrid publisher that provided design, proofreading, printing, and distribution.

My advice: invest in one more round of editing than you think you need, and do that early on. Experienced as I was after 35 years of writing and editing for businesses, I discovered that a book for the public requires many eyes, especially when it’s your own story.

Contact info:

• Deborah Kasdan, debkasdan@gmail.com, http://www.deborahkasdan.com, Twitter (X): @debkasdan, Facebook: debkasdan, Instagram: @debkasdan, LinkedIn: deborah kasdan
• Book: Roll Back the World: A Sister’s Memoir
• Publicist: Johanna Ramos-Boyar, 703-646-5137, johanna@jrbpr.biz

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Banner image adapted from original photo by Deborah Kasdan.

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