Growing up in the 1950s, part of a close-knit Portuguese family in the South American colony of British Guiana, I often thought about the little boy in that photo in my father's album. I lingered over his round face and serious gaze as he faced the camera, and the attentive look of the woman crouched near him with the boyish haircut, his mother Ena. 

 

I knew very little about them. I lived in a happy home, my brother George and I nurtured by loving grandparents, and I never asked myself why my mother had moved a continent away or the reason that little boy, who grew up to be my father, had died just a few months after I was born. Nor did I know why, having been brought up Catholic, I had a Jewish last name. Later, living in Canada, I began to explore the difficult issues that my family history raised.

 

The answers emerge gradually in this luminous, compelling memoir that explores the aftermath of loss and the true meaning of home.