Brodeur was fourteen when her glamorous and charismatic mother confided that she was having an affair with her husband’s close friend. From that moment, Brodeur became an accomplice in her mother’s deceptions—to the point where her mother’s needs nearly overwhelmed her own. In her compelling, beautifully written memoir, Brodeur, executive director of Aspen Words and co-founder of Zoetrope: All-Story, recounts the story of this unusual mother-daughter relationship and explores its lasting effects, which ranged from depression to Brodeur’s own precarious marriage, to a growing self-awareness, which finally allowed Brodeur to free herself of her mother’s manipulations and reclaim her own identity as a person and a mother.
Brodeur will be in conversation with Ellen Silva, senior supervising editor of the arts desk at NPR.