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Roll Back the World: A Sister’s Memoir

from a book review by psychiatrist Awais Aftab:

"Individuals with schizophrenia need pride, meaning, self-esteem, and agency to flourish as much as anyone else, perhaps even more so. How our collective lives can be organized to make these possibilities accessible to individuals like Rachel is a social challenge rivaling the scientific one, and it is a task we have long neglected."

Writing About Rachel

When my older sister died I felt a sudden urge to tell her story. Rachel was a strong, courageous woman who endured decades in a system that diagnosed her with schizophrenia but couldn’t help her. She was a survivor, but the damage and stigma of severe mental illness made her an outcast from society.
This need to honor her life was unlike anything I had felt before. I couldn’t ignore it. I wanted people to know that Rachel was part of a family that loved her even though they couldn’t care for her when she needed help. Her lifelong passion for poetry and creativity inspired me and I am grateful that writing this memoir brought us together again. I hope you will be inspired by it too.
Rachel with her parents during World War II, with me, and with kibbutz friends during her year in Israel. Painting by Gary Tenenbaum.

A Kirkus Reviews Top Indie Book of 2023

About The Author

I grew up mainly in the Midwest before moving to the East Coast, where my husband and I brought up our two daughters. After retiring from a thirty-five-year career writing about business and technology, I joined Westport Writers’ Workshop to make my personal stories come alive. I served on the board of directors of an intergenerational housing organization and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for Southwest CT. I love swimming, yoga, and frequent visits with my four grandchildren. During the summer my husband and I vacation near the great Nauset Marsh of Cape Cod and live the rest of the year in Norwalk, Connecticut. I’m now working on a novel based on my mother’s stories about her adventures growing up in a Jewish orphanage in Chicago during the 1930s.
  • "Roll Back the World is a complex, layered story that will stick with readers a long time."
    —Indie Global Reads, Fall 2023, Shelf Unbound
    "A beautiful and brave book. Written with compassion, truth, devotion, and deep insight."
    —Rahla Xenopoulos, Author A Memoir of Love and Madness, Bubbles, Tribe and The Season of Glass
  • "intelligent & probing. . . an act of catharsis. . . profoundly moving. . ."
    —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
  • "Poignant. . . an important memoir"
    —Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone, author of Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, 2020 Nautilus Book Award: Gold in Psychology
    "A heartfelt tribute for a lost sister"
    —Grace Cho, author of Tastes Like War, 2021 National Book Awards non-fiction finalist
  • "A riveting, courageous and highly personal account of a descent into madness and the mental health system's sorely misguided response"
    —Peter Stastny, psychiatrist, filmmaker and a co-author of The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
  • "compelling and honest"
    —Kenneth Duckworth, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
    "raw, real and loving"
    —Randye Kaye, author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey from the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope

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ISBN: 978-1647425715 | PUBLISHER: SHE WRITES PRESS
Publicist: johanNA Ramos-Boyer at  johanna@jrbpr.biz