On the twentieth anniversary of Bernard Malamud's death, Janna Malamud Smith explores her father's private, unpublished letters and journals to remember the life of a seminal writer of our time. Malamud left New York, his immigrant father's failing grocery store, and his mother's madness, for a humble teaching position at an Oregon agricultural college. Smith remembers his demanding, ambitious writing schedule and the fragile balance of his marriage, but also his charm, humor and devotion. She evokes the heady culture of Bennington and Harvard in the sixties and reveals her father's intimacies - and her own - in that radically changing time.
