Book Talk: Family genealogist unearths ‘Buried Secrets’
Researching genealogy has many rewards. Discovering and preserving family history can be gratifying, but what if you look into your grandparents’ identities and find that they didn’t exist? That’s the puzzle that faced Anne Hanson, author of “Buried Secrets: Looking for Frank and Ida,” when her father finally allowed her access to his family photos.
Hanson’s father Harley had asked her decades before to research his parents, but any time Harley’s father Frank had been asked about his family, his response was “They’re all dead. They died.” Harley and his three brothers grew up with their parents, Frank and Ida Hanson, in Akron; there had been eight siblings in all.
Hanson and her sisters were able to elicit Frank and Ida’s wedding date and the names of their parents, but in the pre-internet 1970s without access to services like AncestryDNA or 23andMe, their regular trips to libraries and city record offices were unproductive. Even after genealogy sites became available in the late 1990s, Hanson and her sisters found not “the tiniest speck of evidence that the families of Frank Hanson and Ida Howe had ever existed.”
The photos that Harley provided included few immediate revelations. With the information that Ida and Frank had grown up in Prospect Park, a district in Brooklyn, New York, where Ida’s father owned a farm, Hanson asked for land records; a Brooklyn clerk told Hanson this was impossible, as there had been no farms there. Some photos included unidentified children; others were simply pictures of houses Hanson didn’t recognize. Some had been cut, having images removed.
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Finally, using a magnifying glass, Hanson was able to read a name on a grave marker on a photo taken in a cemetery. It was the key to unraveling the mystery, but not to why. Were Frank and Ida on the run from the law? Were they spies? What took them to Akron? “Buried Secrets” is as suspenseful as a detective novel, and Hanson is orderly in presenting her research. She inserts a few hypothetical scenarios to account for her theories, but then backs them up with investigation. Her obliging boyfriend, later husband, was along for the ride.
“Buried Secrets” (360 pages, softcover) costs $18.99 from online retailers. Anne Hanson lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has worked in software development.
‘Sober Chronicles’
Cuyahoga Falls musician Marc Lee Shannon introduced himself in 2019 as he began his regular column in the Devil Strip, the community-owned magazine that ceased publication in late 2021 after about seven years. “Sober Chronicles,” his essays about recovery from alcoholism, shared his own progress and offered encouragement, always ending with “Steady on.”
“Sober Chronicles: My Journey of Discovery Along the Path to Recovery” is a collection of those columns, annotated in retrospect. Shannon doesn’t go into explicit detail about the turning point that made him call for help in 2014 but mentions his outpatient program and the relationship between post-acute withdrawal syndrome and his Type II diabetes.
Shannon speaks of the difficulty of getting through the holidays while sober, the challenge of relapse and the isolation that the COVID-19 epidemic brought, which affected the ability of those in recovery to follow their successful routines. It also devastated the economic stability of musicians like Shannon, who lost all their bookings (Shannon, a singer-songwriter, was a member of Michael Stanley’s band The Resonators for more than 25 years).
Shannon talks to others who tell their stories of recovery; after one, he reveals a deeply repressed memory that emerged during a counseling session. Listening and empathy are clearly crucial to recovery.
“Sober Chronicles” (157 pages, softcover) costs $19.99 from the author’s website, marcleeshannon.com. Marc Lee Shannon hosts the Recovery Talks podcast for the Rock + Recovery radio show on WAPS-FM.
Events
Wadsworth Public Library (132 Broad St.): Misty Wilson, author of the graphic memoir “Play Like a Girl,” presents “Becoming a Kid-Lit Author” and discusses getting a book published, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Music Box Supper Club (1148 Main Ave., Cleveland): The Cleveland Stories Dinner Party series continues with Wendy Koile, author of “Lake Erie Murder & Mayhem,” who will talk about pirates, bank robbers and more, 7 p.m. Thursday. Dinner is $25; the lecture is free. Reservations at musicboxcle.com.
Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library: The Online Author Talk Series continues with Namina Forma, talking about “The Merciless Ones,” second in The Gilded Ones young adult fantasy series, 2 p.m. Saturday. Register at smfpl.org.
Email information about books of local interest, and event notices at least two weeks in advance to BeaconBookTalk@gmail.com and bjnews@thebeaconjournal.com. Barbara McIntyre tweets at @BarbaraMcI.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Family genealogist unearths ‘Buried Secrets’
