In the acknowledgments of her thoughtful and moving memoir, "Departure Stories," Elisa Bernick thanks a mentor who counseled her not to turn her story into a novel. Readers, too, will want to thank this person, because the originality of the approach taken here is a big part of the book's charm. And considering the sad story it tells, "charming" itself is an accomplishment.
Bernick grew up the second of four siblings in a Jewish family in the almost completely Christian Minneapolis suburb of New Hope in the 1960s and '70s. The version of "Minnesota Nice" displayed by its residents did little to conceal their knee-jerk antisemitism. Bernick's mother, Arlene, was a bright, competitive, vivacious, intensely unhappy woman with what can only be described as a rather stunted maternal instinct. She was verbally and physically abusive, she disappeared for days at a time, and she eventually separated her children from their father by moving across the country and put them in harm's way with a terrifying stepfather. As the author puts it, toward the end of the book:
"Before I wrote this book, it was almost impossible for me to consider telling a story of my mother that was larger than her abuse and abandonment. It felt too much like letting her off the hook. You may be thinking, 'Wait a minute. Almost all of these stories are about abuse and abandonment!' I'll concede that — up to a point. But haven't I also presented my mother's actions in a larger context? Haven't I given possible reasons for her behavior?"
