My novel Zelda’s Daughters is based on my life story: I was born to heroin addicts and separated from my severely disabled twin sister when we were babies. My biological mother Zelda was a life-long drug abuser who grew up in the Bronx during the 1940s-50s. In 1954, at age 18, she began her battle with heroin. In 1964, when we were two years old, she relinquished me to her sister Sally to be raised on Long Island while she raised my twin sister Alison, exposing her to abuse and squalor. My novel depicts my harrowing and emotional “reunion” with Zelda and my twin sister. A story about loss, betrayal, and transcendence, Zelda’s Daughters portrays a New York family’s saga from the 1940s to the 1990s. Its themes include overcoming the legacy of addiction, the redemptive power of love, and the indestructible bond of twins.

Why isn’t Zelda’s Daughters a memoir?

That’s a good question, one I didn’t ask myself until I was asked several years after I’d begun writing it as fiction. The truth is, I was born in 1962, so I had to imagine the first half of the book based on what my mom Sally told me had occurred within her family.

I have long dreamt of fictionalizing my family’s story in the hopes of creating something beautiful and honorable out of something tragic and destructive. When I was sixteen, I was profoundly affected by William Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice and decided that being a novelist was one of the coolest things I could ever aspire to be.

I hope I have done my family proud in rendering our story. And I hope my novel offers readers insight, hope, and inspiration in facing addiction’s destructive legacy.