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Roll Back the World: A Sister's Memoir Paperback – October 17, 2023

by Deborah Kasdan (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 100 Indie Books of 2023

“Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.”
—Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW

What happens to sibling relationships when your older sister, the budding poet you loved and admired as a child, falls prey to severe mental illness? When Deborah Kasdan’s sister returns from a gap year in Israel, she dazzles friends and family with her sophistication and beauty. In three years, however, Rachel is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The diagnosis: schizophrenia.  As the years pass, Deborah focuses on her own family and career but constantly feels shadowed by a sense of guilt, especially when a plan to help Rachel backfires and leaves her hospitalized 2,000 miles from home. Eventually a poem Rachel writes gains her admission, against all odds, to a highly regarded community mental health program. After decades, she finally gains the freedom she has long yearned for.

Relating her older sister’s struggle, Kasdan excavates its connections to family history and provides a poignant look at a mid-century Jewish family, especially during WWII and the Cold War. As she relates this history to her sister’s life, she realizes how writing consoles both Rachel and her, and how it also connects them. Ultimately, Roll Back the World is a profound testament to the power of writing to heal. 
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    She Writes Press
  4. Publication date
    October 17, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1647425719
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1647425715
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

2023 Foreword INDIES,  Finalist: Autobiography and Memoir

“The author delves deeply into memory and family dynamics to understand her sister’s diagnosis and, in doing so, finds self-forgiveness for being unable to save her. Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.”
—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

“. . . a compelling and honest book about the many complexities that impact a family when the oldest sibling has a serious mental health condition. When her sister became ill, the family was without appropriate support or education.”
—Kenneth Duckworth MD, Chief Medical Officer, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

“Kasdan’s memoir thoughtfully examines the lifelong impact of schizophrenia on the family—both the complicated dynamics around making meaning out of the loved one’s experience and finding effective treatment within a broken mental health care system.”
 —Grace Cho, author of National Book Award finalist Tastes Like War

“Poignant and filled with unrelenting dedication to her sister's plight, the author sensitively narrates a family's search for alternative mental health care, the physical and emotional price it pays, and the sheer goodness of caring professionals and neighbors. Peppered with poetry and letters, this is an important memoir.” 
—Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone, author of Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, 2020 Nautilus Book Award: Gold in Psychology

“. . . a riveting, courageous and highly personal account of a descent into madness and the mental health system's sorely misguided response. . . a window to a time when psychiatry was emboldened by the advent of new drugs that turned out way more harmful than expected.” 
—Peter Stastny, psychiatrist, filmmaker, and a co-author of The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

“This raw, real and loving memoir spotlights the loss and responsibility felt by one family when serious mental illness strikes. It is told through the eyes of a sister who struggles to understand and help, but also live her own life while her sister, a gifted poet, disappears behind the symptoms of schizophrenia..”
—Randy Kaye, author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey from the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope

About the Author

Deborah Kasdan lived in the Midwest before moving to the Northeast, where she had a thirty-five-year career writing about business and technology. She has served on the board of directors of an intergenerational housing organization and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for Southwest CT. She is a passionate swimmer and yoga practitioner, and a grandmother of four. During the summer she and her husband vacation near the great Nauset Marsh of Cape Cod and live the rest of the year in Norwalk, Connecticut. She is currently working on a novel based on her mother’s stories about growing up in Chicago during the 1930s.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ She Writes Press (October 17, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1647425719
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1647425715
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

About the author

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Deborah Kasdan

Deborah Kasdan

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After retiring from a thirty-five-year career writing about business and technology, Deborah Kasdan joined Westport Writers' Workshop to make her personal stories come alive. She has served on the board of directors of an intergenerational housing organization and the National Organization on Mental Illness (NAMI) for Southwest CT. She loves swimming, yoga, and frequent visits with her four grandchildren. Currently, she is working on a novel about the adventures of a girl growing up in a Jewish orphanage in Chicago during the 1930s. During the summer she and her husband reside near the great Nauset Marsh of Cape Cod and live the rest of the year in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Penelope Phillips
5.0 out of 5 stars Sisters' Contrasting Life Stories
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2024
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As the title Roll Back the World: A Sister's Memoir suggests, Deborah Kasdan tells two stories, her own and that of her brilliant and creative older sister, Rachel who was diagnosed young with schizophrenia. Included are several of Rachel’s beautiful and accessible poems that express her suffering and show the enormous potential that was lost. The author is strictly honest about her and her family’s responses to Rachel’s erratic behavior. For so many years, their attempts at finding good treatments when so few are available were thwarted. Ultimately the author discovers an association for the ethical treatment of mental tribulations. NAMI, and while it is too late for Rachel, there is hope for the future. It is a touching, poignant and fascinatingl book, so wonderfully written that it was hard to put down -- an investigation of a profound mystery.
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Terri E
5.0 out of 5 stars A moving tribute to a family’s journey to love
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2024
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A well written, painful at times, story of one family’s struggle with a loved one’s mental illness. It truly is a touching description of the tentacles of the impact looking back at one’s personal journey to find healing. Left me feeling inspired and hopeful.
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Ron Pinciaro
5.0 out of 5 stars A Family's Lifelong Quest To Make One Member Whole....
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2024
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In her captivating memoir, Deborah Kasdan tries to find answers to the question of whether her older sister, Rachel, now diagnosed with schizophrenia, can ever recover from this degrading affliction.
She and the other members of her family spend lifetimes trying, from near and far, to return her to some semblance of the beautiful, cultured, young woman of nineteen they loved so well and lost to the punishing diagnosis.
Along the way she shows us examples of Rachel’s dogged independence and samples of Rachel’s remarkable writing skills in her letters and her poetry.
We see within the pages an entire family trying to work together to find a solution, and search for clues that can satisfy their hopes for the best possible life they can make for their Rachel.
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Liz K.
5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant and Beautiful
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2024
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Roll Back the World is a stunning story of the author’s relationship with her sister’s mental illness and how it impacted her immediate and extended family. The decades of her sister Rachel’s illness preceded any adequate understanding of or treatment for schizophrenia, making it a bewildering and heartbreaking experience for everyone. Confusion, guilt, inexperience, love, family ties, and caring all tumble together in this beautifully crafted story of a devastating and tragic illness. This book is a heartfelt tribute to a beloved sibling, as well as offering the reader insight into the anguish of mental illness.
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Michael Buckland
5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply personal account
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2023
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Roll Back The World is a very personal account of a younger sister experiencing her older sister's slide into mental illness. The author, Deborah Kasden, recounts both her family's inability to help her sister Rachel as schizophrenia begins to diminish her, as well as Deborah's own feeling of helplessness and guilt as Rachael's schizophrenia progresses. This is a beautifully written story. Very poignant, very personal, very loving, very sad. Very worthwhile.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A Sister's loving memoir
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a wonderful book, beautifully written. All families are complicated, but when one member has an illness, many more questions of care, love, duty, guilt, and responsibility come into play. Roll Back the World portrays the life of a fascinating, talented poet who made a lasting impression on so many people, especially her sister, Deborah, who loved her always.
One person found this helpful
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Rebecca B. Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing and beautiful!
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2023
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In Roll Back the World, Deb Kasdan not only pieces together the family history and possible genetic and external factors that led up to the emergence of her sister's shizophrenia, but she gives life to a young woman who was seemingly lost to her diagnosis and years of well-intentioned but isolating and ineffective treatment. Rachel emerges principally through her vivid poems, which Kasdan includes throughout the story, reminding us that behind the doors of the institutions and underneath the medications beat the heart of an artist. Even though we know where the story leads, Kasdan tells an engrossing story of family life, including a mother raised in an orphanage and parents followed by the FBI for their communist sympathies.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling story of a woman's love for her sister.
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2023
Verified Purchase
Deborah has written a very insightful, honest, and sympathetic book about the tragic life of her sister Rachel. It's an important book for our society as we struggle as a nation to understand and heal the mentally ill, respecting their pain and their humanity.
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