Overview

Named one of Kirkus Reviews' Best 100 Indie Books of 2023 ""Intricate and affecting, Kasdan's debut finds hope in the saddest of stories."" -Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW What happens to sibling relationships when your older sister, the budding poet you loved and admired as a child, falls prey to severe mental illness?When Deborah Kasdan's sister returns from a gap year in Israel, she dazzles friends and family with her sophistication and beauty. In three years, however, Rachel is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The diagnosis: schizophrenia.As the years pass, Deborah focuses on her own family and career but constantly feels shadowed by a sense of guilt, especially when a plan to help Rachel backfiresand leaves her hospitalized 2,000 miles from home. Eventually a poem Rachel writes gains her admission, against all odds, to a highly regarded community mental health program. After decades, she finally gains the freedom she has long yearned for. Relating her older sister's struggle, Kasdan excavates its connections to family history and provides a poignant look at a mid-century Jewish family, especially during WWII and the Cold War. As she relates this history to her sister's life, she realizes how writing consoles both Rachel and her, and how it also connects them. Ultimately,Roll Back the Worldis a profound testament to the power of writing to heal.

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9781647425715

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“The author delves deeply into memory and family dynamics to understand her sister’s diagnosis and, in doing so, finds self-forgiveness for being unable to save her. Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.” —Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

When Deborah Kasdan retired from a thirty-five-year career writing about business and technology, she joined Westport Writers Workshop to make her personal stories come alive. She has served on the board of directors of an intergenerational housing organization and the National Organization on Mental Illness (NAMI) for Southwest CT. Her favorite activities are swimming, yoga, and visits with her four grandchildren. During the summer she and her husband reside near the great Nauset Marsh of Cape Cod and live the rest of the year in Norwalk, Connecticut. Currently she is writing a novel based on her mother’s adventures during the 1930s in Chicago, where she grew up in a Jewish orphanage.

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