{"product_id":"twice-born-isbn-9781646223091","title":"Twice Born","description":"\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the NBCC Award for Autobiography\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA deeply reflective memoir weaving together the personal story of Hester Kaplan’s acclaimed biographer father and his fraught effect on her artistic development with a rich portrait of twentieth century intellectual life and a meditation on family intimacy, identity, and the art of writing\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTwice Born\u003c\/i\u003e opens with the death of Hester’s father, Justin Kaplan, known for his award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Despite his relatively prolific output, Justin rarely wrote, or said, much about himself—even to his daughter. Standing at his open casket, Hester has the realization that while alive, her father never looked her in the eyes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHester takes on the challenge of piecing together as intimate a biography of her own father as possible, comparing his story to the lives of his biographical subjects and dissecting the various personas he presents to the world—from which the name “dad,” “daddy,” or even “father” is conspicuously and painfully absent. Parallel to Justin’s story runs Hester’s own journey of development as a writer and a thinker, which begins in the shadow of not only her talented father, but also her novelist mother, and the fiercely protective union the two of them had built, often to the exclusion of their own children. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn sensitive, intimate writing, Kaplan paints a rich picture of the twentieth century literary world that she grew up in, all while reflecting on the deceptive nature of memory, the loneliness of creative pursuits, and the dovetailing paradoxes of biographical and autobiographical writing.\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the NBCC Award for Autobiography\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[A] deeply moving book . . . Blurring the lines between life and death, fiction and reality, \u003ci\u003eTwice Born\u003c\/i\u003e is, ultimately, neither Justin Kaplan‘s biography nor Hester Kaplan’s autobiography but both things creatively meshed . . .\u003ci\u003e Twice Born \u003c\/i\u003esplendidly delivers what Hester at the beginning of her quest said she was looking for—something that would, at long last, 'unburden' both her father and herself.\" —Christoph Irmscher, \u003ci\u003eOn the Seawall\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Tenderly composed, and when it peeks into the larger world, smartly observed.\" —John Summers, \u003ci\u003eCambridge Day\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Formally and emotionally complicated . . . Hester becomes a biographer of her biographer father, hoping to feel how it felt for him to live his life by reading what he wrote of other, more famous lives.\" —Anthony Domestico, \u003ci\u003eCommonweal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Lovely and tender . . . The child of a writer has much to write about—Hes­ter Kaplan does so with gleam­ing insights into her father’s rhythms.\" —Sam Franzini, \u003ci\u003eJewish Book Council\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[An] affecting memoir.\" —Sophia Stewart, \u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[An] affecting memoir . . . Melancholy and meticulously written, this excavation of a literary lineage isn’t easy to forget.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Written in a rich, evocative language . . . A daughter’s searching memoir, reflecting on the perils and promises of biography and the art of reading the self.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hester Kaplan does with memoir what her acclaimed father Justin did with biography—finds the right subject, makes it new, and teaches us how to write with great compassion and grace.\" —Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003ePilgrim at Tinker Creek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Justin Kaplan was a brilliant biographer and a role model for many of us. In this intimate and unflinching look at her oh-so-private father, Hester Kaplan makes clear she has inherited Justin's genes for understated, artful and illuminating narrative.\" —Larry Tye, author of \u003ci\u003eBobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"In this acutely observed, beautifully drawn portrait, Hester Kaplan searches for her eminent biographer father through his work—especially on Mark Twain—as well as through his silences, secrets, and her own vivid memories. And with deep imaginative empathy, she finds him.\" —Jean Strouse, author of \u003ci\u003eFamily Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"While the course of a life once lived cannot be changed, its meaning can be, and that magic happens here. A loving daughter draws on a deep well of feeling, and a skilled writer draws on hard-earned wisdom, to bring irresistibly to life the ingenious but wounded figures of her unforgotten father, of his greatest subject—and of Hester Kaplan herself, who is every bit their match. Exquisite biography. Heart-rending memoir. Twice born. Twice blest.” —James Carroll, author of \u003ci\u003eAn American Requiem\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A magnificent combination of memoir and biography, \u003ci\u003eTwice Born\u003c\/i\u003e is a work of reconciliation and a resurrection of the extraordinary man who gave us Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and at last, through his daughter’s magic, his own passionate heart.\" —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eMargaret Fuller: A New American Life \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eHester Kaplan\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of novels and story collections including \u003ci\u003eThe Edge of Marriage\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories series. She is the recipient of two NEA awards, and was named a Mark Twain Fellow for \u003ci\u003eTwice Born.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Catapult","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233803088101,"sku":"NP9781646223091","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781646223091.jpg?v=1767743067","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/twice-born-isbn-9781646223091","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}