Luce Garrison narrates the unraveling of her stoic Midwestern family: a mother plagued by bipolar disorder, a father guilt-ridden by his inability to confront his wife’s descent into madness, and Luce’s own unassailable conviction that she can never be as loved as the brothers she has lost. As a child, Luce often lingered over albums of glossy photographs, longing to be just like her lovely, enigmatic mother. But images frozen for an instant could not capture the lightless depression and manic bouts of frenzied activity which demonized Bets Garrison. Luce does not know the depths of her mother’s undiagnosed mental illness. Her only certainty? She is an inadequate substitute for the older brother who was stillborn just three months after her parents’ marriage. After giving birth to Jonny, eleven years Luce’s junior, Bets develops an obsessive, disturbing devotion which trumps every other relationship in the Garrison home. Although Luce tries to minimize the gulf, she is excluded from the smothering attention her mother lavishes upon Jonny. Caught in a void, she can neither be loving sister nor cherished daughter. She can only be in the way. Set in rural Wisconsin, We Dare Not Whisper explores the toxic legacy of a self-destructive family. With hauntingly beautiful prose, Jan Netolicky illuminates the suffering of individuals with bipolar disorder and the unthinkable challenges facing those closest to them.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

This book is Dedicated to all of Kosovo`s children, who, in way or another, survived the war, torture, and, what is most difficult, death in the eyes of God. I`m not more than you are. I`m here from you and for you. Our roots have the same blood, pain, and language! The time has come for your voice, along with mine, to be heard, and there is no one to deny this We children of Kosovo We children of the war. In that very close moment, I stopped in the street, crying with my head towards the sky, praying. Something inside me spoke: Look, feel and remember everything, because one day, when you grow up, you have to be able to tell this story to the World.