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Summary
Summary
For many years, Parade magazine's Walter Anderson, one of America's most admired editors, harbored a deep secret about his heritage and the circumstances of his birth. With the publication of this affecting memoir, he reveals the truth about his life and tells the inspirational story of his rags-to-riches career.
Anderson grew up on the "wrong side of the tracks" in Mount Vernon, New York, the youngest child of an alcoholic, abusive father. He escaped his situation by quitting high school at sixteen to join the Marines. Four years later, while on leave to attend his father's funeral, he stuns his mother with a question that has inexplicably haunted him since he was a small boy: Was the man who had so tormented him in his childhood his real father? Her answer: Walter was born of a wartime love affair between his Protestant mother and the Jewish man she loved. His mother swears him to secrecy, and he honors their pact for nearly thirty-five years, and then one day he meets an unknown brother -- another son of his real father -- who has lived a similar, nearly parallel life. Their secret, in ways large and small, defines the course of his life.
Meant To Be is a love story, a journey of self-discovery and spiritual reckoning, and a provocative challenge to commonly held notions about the role of heredity in our lives. Passionately told and deeply moving, Anderson's memoir is the mesmerizing story that he was always meant to tell.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
On the day of his father's funeral in 1969, Anderson, the longtime editor of Parade magazine and CEO of Parade Publications, asked his mother a question that had been on his mind for years: "The man we just buried... Was he my father?" She admitted Anderson's real father had been a Russian-Jewish man she fell in love with while her husband was fighting in WWII. Learning he was, in fact, not the son of the abusive, drunken man who'd raised him would change the course of Anderson's life, but he honored his mother's wish to keep her secret while his two siblings were alive. Thirty-four years later, his astonishingly honest account of his family history is bound to become a coming-of-age classic. Anderson's deft handling of his impoverished childhood in Mount Vernon, N.Y., bears no trace of self-pity. He doesn't gloss over the incessant beatings he suffered at home or the cruelty and taunting he endured on the streets, but he also manages to pay tribute to the neighborhood mother who took an interest in his education and the friends who stuck by his side. Although Anderson's account of his college years and early days in publishing are riveting, the pieces of his puzzle really fall into place when he finally tracks down his half-brother, Herbert Dorfman. The build-up to their first conversation is the stuff of blockbuster suspense and, when it finally happens, Dorfman says it all: "This is simply amazing." Agent, Jack Scovil. (Sept.) Forecast: Anderson's connections to Parade, which has a circulation of roughly 36 million, are enough to make this book a hit, but they'll be aided by blurbs from Elie Wiesel, Marlo Thomas, Bill Bradley and other luminaries. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A lean, readable, and sanguine memoir celebrating an adult rite of passage. In brief, briskly paced chapters explaining how he finally came to meet his biological father, former Parade magazine editor Anderson frequently pauses to interject Deep Thoughts and Philosophical Questions. "Why is God unfair?" "How can I marry Loretta?" "Elie [Wiesel] understands, Mom. This hurts more than I expected." (This last as he looks at his dead mother.) These literary public-service announcements interrupt rather than enhance a remarkable story. Only after his father died could 21-year-old Anderson finally ask his mother the question that had bothered him since childhood: who was his father? The man who had just died beat Anderson so often that the promising student left school early and joined the Marines to get away from home. He'd always sensed that he was different from his two older siblings, both in temperament and appearance, and his mother confirmed these feelings. His real father, she told him, was Albert Dorfman, a Jewish co-worker with whom she had an affair during WWII while her husband was fighting in Europe. Recalling his tough childhood in an equally tough neighborhood, his experiences as a sergeant in Vietnam, and the hardships following his return (protests against the war, he believes, made finding a job difficult), Anderson also details his alienation and anger during those years. Learning the truth helped; he attended college, found work at a newspaper, and married happily. Because his mother had made him promise not to tell his siblings about her affair, he only felt free to find his real father after they died in middle age. All ends well as families meet and bond, and Anderson, no longer angry, finds meaning in his life. Self-help and grit vividly affirmed. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Even as a child, Anderson knew he was different. Physically, temperamentally, and intellectually removed from his older siblings, he was most at odds with his alcoholic father, at whose hands he suffered devastating emotional and physical abuse. One question haunted him for years: Is this my real father? And it was only after the man's death that Anderson was able to confront his mother with his doubts. Her answer, that she had an illicit affair while his father was overseas during World War II, unleashes more questions than it answers and he spends decades reevaluating his character, his talents, and his life's goals. Anderson, the former editor and current chairman of Parade publications, relates his up-by-the-bootstraps success story with humility and awe. As he reveals his life through illustrative anecdotes that take him from the jungles of Vietnam to audiences with heads of state, Anderson's abiding spirituality, compassion, and appreciation for the essence of family are confirmed within the context of one courageous man's pursuit of the American dream. --Carol Haggas Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Anderson had a real surprise when he returned from Vietnam; he learned that his real father was not the man who raised him but a POW with whom his mother had an affair. That didn't stop Anderson from becoming editor of Parade. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Meant To Be Chapter One I immediately recognized the blue suit. He had bought it years before from Mr. Freeman, a salesman who sold clothes and shoes door-to-door in our old neighborhood. This suit -- the only one he owned -- had seen some weddings and retirement dinners in its time, but mainly it had been worn to funerals. And now it had arrived at its last funeral: his. The morticians had carefully dressed him in the old blue suit, a white shirt and a blue tie, then placed his body inside a polished wood casket, arranging his forearms so that his right hand crossed neatly over his left. It was on his face, though, where the craftsmen of the Burr Davis Funeral Home in Mount Vernon, New York, had proved their craft, accomplishing a remarkable feat: The late William Henry Anderson seemed serene -- his eyes closed, his expression neutral, as if he were enjoying a deep and peaceful sleep. Where is the rage now? I wondered. A few hours earlier, my brother Bill had given me a copy of the obituary that had appeared that day, February 7, 1966, in the local newspaper, the Daily Argus : William H. (Whitey) Anderson Sr., 56, a retired troubleshooter for Con Edison, died yesterday at the U.S. Veterans Hospital in the Bronx. Mr. Anderson, son of the late Henry W. and Edith (Heikkela) Anderson, was born April 23, 1909, in New Rochelle. A Mount Vernon resident for 35 years, he was a volunteer fireman in Engine 2 and company captain for 14 years. He was a World War II veteran. Surviving are his wife, Ethel (Crolly) Anderson; two sons, William H. Anderson Jr. of Mount Vernon and Sgt. Walter H. Anderson, a U.S. Marine; a daughter, Mrs. Carol Gennimi of Yorktown Heights; a sister, Mrs. Dhyne Seacord of Elmhurst, L.I.; and five grandchildren. I remembered his boast: "When I go, they'll all be there!" And they were. The funeral parlor was filled. Dozens of firemen who knew him from his days as a volunteer filled the rear rows. Former co-workers from Con Edison, relatives and family friends from Mount Vernon, Saratoga, New Jersey and Long Island had found seats or queued in the side aisles. My sister, Carol, was seated in the front row next to my mother. My brother, who had been an Engine 2 volunteer himself but was now a paid firefighter, finished greeting his fellow firemen, then joined me standing in the rear. "I don't see any of the Cheatham brothers," I told Bill. "Aren't they coming?" From the age of five until I quit high school at sixteen to enlist in the Marines, we had lived in a tenement on the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Third Street -- directly across from Cheatham Brothers Moving and Storage Company. "No," Bill said. "The Cheathams won't be coming. Out of respect. Mom told me they called her." Strange, I thought, that my brother didn't say the words "colored" or "Negro" or "black." He knew that his father's best friends, his favorite drinking buddies, were absent because of their race, that they must have decided their presence would cause discomfort or be unwelcome. I guess I was still mulling this contradiction after the eulogy began, because the minister was well into it before I realized that I didn't recognize the man whose virtues he was praising: "Loved and loving"? How about "feared"? "Kind"? How about "rough"? "Respect for the Scriptures"? Where did that come from? "Who the hell is he talking about?" my brother whispered. "The old man would not go for this." "Amen," I said. Then my mother -- to the genuine surprise of my brother, my sister, me and probably everyone else in the room who knew her well -- began crying hysterically, pleading, "Willie, take me with you!" Before we left the parlor, my sister, brother and I did our best to soothe her, and we must have succeeded, because she was relaxed when we got her home. Two days later, the pastor spoke only briefly at the Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle. My sister, her husband and I then drove to my mother's one-bedroom apartment in Mount Vernon, where I was staying on emergency leave from the Marines. "When are you going back to San Diego?" my sister asked me. "I have to return to the base by Saturday," I told her. "Meanwhile, I'll stay with Mommy, so she won't be alone." "Now that Daddy is gone, are you still planning to stay in California when you're discharged?" I knew that really wasn't meant to be a question. Carol was persistent. Now that I had returned safely from Vietnam, my sister wanted her little brother to come home forever. "California's my future," I said, and in an attempt to quickly close the discussion, I added, "I'm going to go to college there." "They have colleges here, you know," Carol persisted. "Thanks," I said. "I knew that." She made a face. This was merely the second or third round of Carol's campaign, I was sure. I could count on more discussions over the next couple of days before I returned to San Diego. About an hour later, after my sister and her husband had gone, my mother and I sat alone in her living room. As we spoke, I could see her demeanor change dramatically. She was at ease now, talkative, even lively. I encouraged her as she reminisced, and I listened closely as she again repeated in detail the circumstances surrounding her husband's death, which had been caused by a cerebral hemorrhage. She described the funeral, who had come, what they had said. She recalled for me the best times of her marriage, then the worst. It was as if she had an overpowering need to express herself. It was a bursting dam. Finally the flood subsided, and she sat quietly ... Meant To Be . Copyright © by Walter Anderson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Meant to Be by Walter Anderson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
