Molly Bruce Jacobs

About the Author

Brucie Jacobs, born in Baltimore, Maryland, graduated from Cornell University where she studied Mandarin Chinese. After working for the National Council for US-China Trade in Washington, D.C., she went on to receive a law degree from Columbia University, practiced law for several years, then turned to writing full-time. Her essays and articles have appeared in Redbook, Baltimore Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, three of the books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and other publications. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including The Crescent Review, Moxie Magazine, Rosebud, Potpourri, The Baltimore Review, and Potomac Review, as well as in Great Writers, Great Stories: Writers from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. (IM Press, 1999).

About the Book
For decades, a well-to-do Baltimore family guarded a secret too painful to reveal, much less speak of among themselves. For one daughter, that secret would haunt her for years but ultimately compel her to take surprising risks and reap unbelievable rewards--the story of which forms the stunning narrative of this remarkable memoir. When Molly Bruce Jacobs, the family's eldest daughter, finds herself newly sober at the age of thirty-eight, she finally seeks out and comes face-to-face with this secret: Anne, a younger sister who was diagnosed at birth with hydrocephalus ("water on the brain") and mental retardation, then institutionalized. Anne has never been home to visit, and Jacobs has never seen her. Full of trepidation, Jacobs goes to meet her sister for the first time. As the book unfilds and the sisters grow close, Jacobs learns of the decades of life not shared, and gains surprising insights about herself, including why she drank for most of her adult life. In addition, she gradually comes to understand that her parents' reasons for placing Anne in an institution were far more complex than she'd ever imagined.