Missing Alice: In Search of a Mother’s Voice

Author Susan Letzler Cole lost her mother, Alice, to cancer in 1990. In this
autobiography of two voices,
she traces a daughter’s search to recover the
missing parts
of a mother, to know her as an individual for the first time. Shunning linear narrative, Cole experiments with a variety of approaches: letters written to her mother three years after Alice died at the age of 78; oral history via taped conversations between mother and daughter during Alice’s illness; excerpts from her 14-year-old mother’s 1926 diary juxtaposed with the author’s expost facto letters to the adolescent diarist. Finally, Cole’s own diary entries contemplate vital themes of family, love, and time. At once innovative and heartfelt,
Missing Alice
seeks to make heard one of those
lost
women’s voices that speak from and help create the world that we know. It is a fine choice for classes in biography, autobiography, and women’s writing, as well as American Jewish and immigrant experience, oral history/memoir, and grief therapy.