Book Club Author Q&A with Deborah Kasdan

Each month, Members of the ISPS-US Book Club read a different book, discuss it over a special Book Club Listserv, and then have a live Q&A with the author on Zoom. Past titles have included Claire Bien’s Hearing Voices, Living Fully, Michael Garrett’s Psychotherapy for Psychosis & Dmitriy Gutkovich’s Life with Voices: A Guide for Harmony. 

Interested in taking part in our groups? If you’re not already a member, join ISPS-US. If you’re already a member, check out our upcoming group meetings on our event calendar to register.

In April the ISPS-US Book Club will be reading "Roll Back the World: A Sister's Memoir" by Deborah Kasdan. We will hold an Author Q&A on Sunday April 28th at 5pm Eastern.

About Roll Back the World: A Sister's Memoir

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 backfires and 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 World is a profound testament to the power of writing to heal.