She Heard Her Father's Voice

This story first ran last December.

When Estelle Epstein was in first grade, she ran away from home.

And headed straight for the library.

Too impatient to wait for her mother, who was busy with a newborn, to take her, she took matters into her own hands. Fortunately, the librarian recognized her, and she was returned home unharmed.

Her act of uncharacteristic rebelliousness still makes her smile. "It's even funnier," she adds, "if you know that I've always had a terrible sense of direction."

This combination of love of words and the willingness to put her ideas into action defines Epstein-- poet, playwright, author, educator, pianist, mother, grandmother and wife-- to this day.

So, it was no surprise when Epstein's rethinking of her father's life turned into a memoir, I Heard My Father's Voice.

"My father was a storyteller," she says. "He'd sit at the edge of the bed I shared with my sister, and tell us stories before we went to sleep. We knew them all, and would ask for which one we wanted." Her book is based on those stories he told—of leaving school at fourteen when his father died in order to take over the barbershop and support the family, of escaping a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War, of escaping the brutal anti-Semitism of the early twentieth century Russian shtetl.

Yet, despite the challenging life it portrays, I Heard My Father's Voice is an up-lifting book. Written in clear and accessible language, the memoir also tells of her father's love of music--he was a violinist, his love of his family, and how he went on to success in America.

Epstein says: "We have to become parents, even grandparents, before we can begin to assess what our own parents' lives are about and before we have any appreciation for who they were or what they did."

This is not Epstein's first published writing. While an educator at Salem State's Lab School, Horace Mann, where she taught for twenty-two years, she wrote and directed a musical for children, The Little Lame Prince, which was published by Bakers. Another children's play, Coming to America, based on her father's story, was also published by Bakers.

"A play is harder to do than a book," she says. "You have to be more aware of the scenery, of where you are. In a book, you can go where your imagination takes you. In a play, you have be more precise."

Epstein's current project? In between talking about her book to North Shore Community College students, as well as other local groups, she has just written a Hannukah song, words and music. "It's about how we celebrate the holiday today," she says. "Do you know anyone who would be interested?"

I Heard My Father's Voice is available at The Spirit of '76 Bookstore, and on Amazon.