Storytelling Sessions Lead To Published Book

When Dr. Ruth Brennan started participating in the Voices in the Bookstore storytelling sessions at R. J. Julia in Madison, she found the audience warm and accepting. Then she decided she had to keep writing so that she would have another story to tell to her new audience.

And now, a year and a half later, the publishing house Little Red Tree in New London has published her book, an immigrant's true story called Gathering Family. Brennan will be celebrating her success with her fans at a book launch party on Nov. 4 at 7:00 p.m. at Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison, CT.

Brennan, who lives in Madison, says launching Gathering Family at R.J. Julia is appropriate and significant. Indeed, she says she recognized the importance of the Voices support in the first line of her memoir’s acknowledgement.

R. J. Julia audience welcoming and devoted

“Whenever I began to read at R.J. Julia, I found the audience welcoming and devoted. I had to continue writing in order to have something to read each month.” On Nov. 4, Brennan will introduce the memoir, read several segments and then take questions. Refreshments will be offered and Brennan will sign books purchased that evening.

Spanning a century and a half, through stories, diaries and pictures, Gathering Family is an immigrant’s true story, beginning with Ruth’s grandmother Sarah’s amazing turn-of-the-century journey across Eastern Europe, her courage, cleverness and single-mindedness, and how three generations of remarkable women and the men they loved prospered in America.

Set first in Eastern Europe and then in the Jewish world of New York’s Lower East Side and Ridgewood, Queens, it contrasts Sarah with her mother’s generation and with her children’s.

Iconic lives, heartbreaking struggles

“I've set the story of my grandparents against the events of the time . . . the massive emigration from the Russian Pale to America at the turn of the 20th century, lives of struggle and prosperity on the Lower East Side, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Lindbergh's flight to Paris, Depression, Socialism and War.” The personal lives of Sarah and Benjamin are iconic—“their struggles are your grandparents' struggles, their children's heartbreaks your heartbreaks.” Throughout the memoir, Ruth gives the readers a glimpse of her life and her children's, and how the values set so long ago remain strong and current today.

So, what values?

Brennan explains, "Courage would be the first for the women in my family, in each generation, including my own. Even my great-grandmother's story is extraordinarily courageous.  Curiosity is another. Commitment to life-long education and learning. Compassion, including putting one's compassion on the line, not just talking about it.

Family values in its most essential sense

"My mother's time as a school secretary in East Harlem, New York City, is one such example. For my grandfather, the value most prized was family. He 'gathered family' (hence, the title of the memoir) by bringing a dozen or more family and friends to America from Eastern Europe before the Nazi Holocaust."

Born and brought up in New York City, author Dr. Ruth Brennan is a human resource management and communications consultant. Dr. Brennan is the widow of Judge Daniel E. Brennan, Jr. and has two children: Danna and Benjamin.

After moving to Connecticut, Dr. Brennan joined the administration of Mayor Leonard Paoletta in Bridgeport, CT. as Director of Human Resources Development. When the Paoletta administration ended, Dr. Brennan became Director of the Executive MBA Program at the University of New Haven. She joined BIC Corporation as Director of Human Resources and for the last 16 years has been a human resource consultant to numerous international, national and Connecticut companies. Dr. Brennan served as Board President of the Bridgeport, Connecticut P. T. Barnum Festival. She has taught at Fairfield University (Graduate School of Corporate and Political Communication), U. of New Haven (Executive MBA) and Sacred Heart U (MBA).

From the introduction of the book:

Introduction

"I am Ruth Gonchar Brennan and I am the keeper of my family’s stories.

My mother Esther passed these stories on to me. After all, I was her only child. Who else?

I had heard these stories all my life: “Ruthie, did I ever tell you about your great-grandmother leaving her marriage bed because she wanted a home of her own?” “Yes, Mom, but tell it again.”

Sitting over coffee at the kitchen table, first in my mother’s apartment in New York City and then in my own house in Connecticut, I listened: “More lox, Mom?” “Oy, I ate too much already. But did I ever tell you when I was a child about my cousin Flo eating so much she was plotzing? And I stared at her for an hour waiting for her to plotz, which I thought meant ‘explode’?”

Some of the stories I did not need to be told--I lived through them, especially the declining demented years of my grandmother and mother. In the five years before she died, my mother told the stories with urgency, as if she knew she would not have them very long.

For two generations past, all the women in my family have suffered from and died of dementia. I am 67 years old and feel the same urgency.

“Mom, you have to write them down,” commanded my daughter, Danna. And so I did. "

To read more about Dr. Ruth Brennan, her book, or to see more videos, you can visit her website at http://www.ruthbrennan.com/.