From the NPR website: ” Some years ago, acclaimed novelist Mary Gordon wrote a memoir about her father, revealing how the man she had loved as a Catholic intellectual was actually a converted Jew, a rabid anti-Semite and an academic fraud.”

I tried to rewrite that, but could think of no other way to put it. Now, in Circling My Mother Gordon tackles the other half, and casts mom Anna Gagliano Gordon in a more favorable light. Spurred by Anna’s death in 2002 at the age of 94, Gordon began tracing the major events of mom’s life, from contracting polio at age three, enduring both World War II and immigration to the United States, and successfully bringing up Mary on her own (Dad died early on) while holding down a steady job. The result is this memoir, a loving testament to the woman. “I write about her,” says Gordon, “because I am a writer and it’s the only way that I can mourn her.”

Gordon appeared yesterday on NPR to discuss the project. Listen to the full interview.