Praise for The Rope of Life

“ Spare, elegant writing traces a daughter’s search for the

truth about her father’s suicide and a psychological journey

back to a WWII death camp ... a revelatory and compelling

memoir.”

–Lee Smith, author of Blue Marlin

“ Mirinda Kossoff’s father was a shape-shifter, a Jewishturned-

Southern Baptist dentist-pilot-farmer who never

managed to escape the stigma of otherness or the pain

of unbelonging. In this memoir, full of heart and heartbreak,

Kossoff reflects on her father’s legacy and her

own journey of self-invention and reinvention. A frank,

moving, timely story.”

–Kim Church, author of Byrd

“The Rope of Life is a deep account of an issue we all struggle

with: Identity. Born to a Baptist mother and a man

who converted from Judaism, Kossoff watched her father

take on roles that served him and roles that he fought

against.

As he acted out in anger at times, she began to wonder

if he had left an essential part of himself behind

somewhere. Kossoff writes deftly about how one man’s

severed identity affected another generation. Moving

and beautiful, The Rope of Life reaches a poignant conclusion.

You won’t regret reading this one.”

–Nancy Peacock, author of The Life and Times

of Persimmon Wilson

•  The vignettes of life in the Jim Crow South for a Southern girl with a Jewish father are well drawn and unfortunately still timely in this era of the New Jim Crow. The author chooses sensory details so well that we are pulled into each scene. We get the sense that she was a bit of an outsider and so became an impeccable observer, which serves her and her readers very well. It's almost impossible to put down this poignant, loving memoir. Highly recommended. -JS

• A most beautiful, compassionate and complex story. I, like others, started it and could not put it down. -JE

• At its center is the author's fascinating and emotionally complex father, a NY Jew turned Southern Baptist. At the same time that she delves into the mystery of his life, she explores - with keen insight, compassion, and humor - her own struggles with identity, acceptance, and the search for home. Kossoff captures the rampant anti-semitism, racism, and sexism in the midcentury (and beyond) South. She witnesses some of these injustices as a child, while others emerge years later in her research. Highly recommended!!!! -S

• Kossoff's memoir, THE ROPE OF LIFE, is harrowing at times, painful at times, humorous at times, and always soulful. You will cheer her on as she untangles the mysteries of her heritage and embraces what she learns. -NP

• Mirinda Kossoff is a talented writer who can craft the perfect description to make the people she writes about spring to life on the page. But this is not just a well-told and interesting story of the author’s life and family background. It’s also a step-by-step analysis and exploration of the author’s father, a complex and contradictory personality, and of their evolving relationship. She explores this relationship as it evolved during her life, in engaging and ever-more-revelatory stories of their interactions, searching out and discovering more of his past, his motivations, and his feelings toward her and her mother—and himself. There is no physical abuse; is there emotional abuse? Does he mean it as such? Does she experience it as such? A mystery that’s never overt underlies this well-written and fascinating work. -EK

• How does heritage shape one’s identity and one’s life? Must we embrace it? Can we escape it? At the heart of this book is the mystery of Mirinda’s father, Hugo Kossoff, a New York Jew from an intellectual, cultured family who, after his service in WWII, settled in the South. He wound up in Danville VA, a town which proudly billed itself the “last Capital of the Confederacy” and was a place as virulently anti-Semitic as racist though not overtly violent towards Jews. Hugo changed his name to Hugh, renounced his faith for Baptist fundamentalism, got a nose job and took on the trappings of a “good ol' boy,” affecting a drawl and chewing wads of tobacco. Though he prospered - Hugh was a dentist - he was never fully accepted. He remained the “Yank Jew” and suffered regular indignities and humiliations. In this absorbing memoir, Hugh’s eldest child traces his life and its heavy impact on her own in an attempt to understand and then transcend the past. What caused him to turn away from his upbringing? Was it something about his original family that caused so radical a shift? Was it for love of Nancy Whitfield, the Baptist woman raised on a farm he met while briefly stationed in Greensboro, NC and married after his overseas assignment? Why did he stay in the South? Hugh bore no animus towards blacks and indeed often treated them for free but he did not buck the system nor take part in the civil rights movement that roiled the South in the 1960s. As the memoir builds to a searing climax, one wonders: did Hugh ever come to regret his decisions? - Booklover

• A compelling story, thoughtfully and truthfully told, about a daughter's desire to understand her father, his complicated choices, and the impact he had on her life. 

                -EAB

• A touchingly personal story of Kossoff’s upbringing in 1950s and 60s small town Virginia. As readers we are offered the privilege of accompanying the author on her journey to understand her parents, to examine her relationship with these complicated people and finally to transcend the insular society of her childhood. Kossoff’s story of embracing of a wider world is reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated. -P

• With astute wisdom, Kossoff weaves a perceptive and passionate account of her dual struggle to come to terms with a family tragedy while also reckoning with the transgressions taking place in the 60s southern culture in which she grew up. -A

• This is the best memoir I have read since Andre Aciman's Out of Egypt. What the two books have in common is a personal story set in a clearly painted time and place. In Aciman's coming-of-age narrative, the title points to the direction religious and ethnic minorities had go in (basically forced to leave) under Abdel Nasser's nationalization of industry and culture. In Kossoff's tale, the background is the south in the 50s and 60s with its virulent anti-Semitism and racism against black Americans. That this background is seen - and sometimes missed in innocence - by a child growing up renders the effect even more impactful. You cringe, cry, root for Mirinda, and eventually see yourself in so many of her struggles. It's a beautiful story, beautifully told. -GW

• Are you looking for a book that you just can’t put down? Then Mirinda Kossoff’s THE ROPE OF LIFE is absolutely the book for you. Kossoff’s skilled writing beautifully draws you into her compelling story. -JR