Burning and Dodging - Schlack, Julie Wittes

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Résumé :
At nearly sixty, Tina Gabler is done living for everyone else. After decades spent supporting the ambitions of family and colleagues, the would-be artist decides it's finally time to take her own creative life seriously. When she accepts a position as research assistant to legendary television news anchor Peter Bright at his remote home in the Thousand Islands, it seems like the perfect opportunity for reinvention. Peter is racing to finish a controversial book exposing the hidden truth behind some of history's most famous photographs-images that shaped public perception but may have been staged, manipulated, or misunderstood. As Tina digs into the stories behind the photographs, her research leads her far beyond the archive. She begins searching for the unidentified child in a famous Roman Vishniac image-and for Peter's estranged adopted daughter, taken from her Cree family during Canada's infamous Sixties Scoop. But in trying to rewrite the endings of other people's stories, Tina is forced to confront her own past-especially the complicated legacy of the father whose ambitions once overshadowed her own. Burning and Dodging is a witty, thoughtful, and deeply human novel about reinvention, truth in storytelling, and the courage it takes to claim a life that is finally your own....

Biographie:
Julie Wittes Schlack's memoir in essays, This All-at-Onceness, was named one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Independent Nonfiction Books of 2019. She reviewed books for The Boston Globe and writes for NPR station WBUR's journal of ideas and opinions, Cognoscenti. Her fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals such as Shenandoah, The Writer's Chronicle, Ninth Letter, and Tampa Review. Julie lives with her husband in a co-housing community in Northampton, Massachusetts....

Sommaire:
An astute and absorbing study of personal growth, human connection, and the nature of reality. -Kirkus Reviews On the cusp of sixty, after a lifetime of supporting the aspirations of others, would-be artist Tina Gabler is feeling a sense of urgency to take her own ambitions seriously and put her creative talents to the test. Temporarily unattached, Tina takes a position with former prime-time news anchor, Peter Bright at his home in the Thousand Islands. Aging and frail, Peter is trying to finish a book about the decline of objectivity in photojournalism-a meticulously documented expos? of iconic but staged photographs that defined reality for an increasingly lazy and credulous public that, Peter believes, demands stories more than facts. As Peter's research assistant, Tina tracks down not just the provenance of his photos, but also the unidentified child in a Roman Vishniac photograph and Peter's estranged daughter, a Cree girl he adopted during the notorious Sixties Scoop in Canada. But in trying to create happy endings for other people's children, she must reexamine her relationship with her own father, and the quest for collective versus personal achievement that has brought her to this unsettled moment. Funny, searching, and gorgeously written, Burning and Dodging entertains as it reveals how the stories we construct about others support the stories we tell about ourselves....