Helen Fremont is an award-winning author and essayist. She wrote the critically-acclaimed, national best-selling book, After Long Silence. Her latest book, The Escape Artist, was selected as an “Editor’s Choice” new book by The New York Times in 2020.
Selected byPeople Magazineas a“Best New Book“ in 2020.
New York Timeslisted as “Editor’s Choice“ in 2020.
38874 Helen Way, Fremont, CA is currently not for sale. Single-family home is a 3 bed, 2.0 bath property. This home was built in 1963 and last sold on for. View more property details, sales history and Zestimate data on Zillow. Helen Fremont's first memoir, After Long Silence, details how she and her sister learn about their family's hidden Holocaust past, a process she hopes will be liberating, but instead only further splinters her family. Her second memoir, The Escape Artist, fills in the shadowy emotional ground in this family beset by secrets and silence. Helen Fremont’s newest memoir continues the story of her family’s survival in the Holocaust and explores the secrets born of coping with traumatic memories. Top Pick February 4, 2020 0 0 Helen Fremont (Photo: Mikki Ansin).
Winner of the Audiophile Earphone Award.
Selected by BookPage as a “Reader’s Choice” best book of 2020.
A luminous family memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller, After Long Silence, lauded as “mesmerizing” (The Washington Post Book World), “extraordinary” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and “a triumphant work of art” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.
Selected by BookPage as one of the “Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2020”(starred review)
Read the New York Times Book Review.
Read the Washington Post Book Review.
Winner of Audiofile Earphones Award.
Advanced Praise for The Escape Artist
“…Beautifully written, honest, and psychologically astute. A must read.”
“A riveting exploration of trauma and its aftermath.”
“The Escape Artist does what the best memoirs do by forcing readers out of their own comfy shoes and into those of another human being. By the time Helen Fremont returned me to my own life at book’s end, I found it had been both shaken and expanded by hers. Isn’t this why we read?”
“A wrenching, riveting memoir… With hard-won clarity and compassion, Fremont shows herself to be a teller of complex truths and a literary artist.”
“A humane, honest, eviscerating but entertaining exploration of intimate betrayal, the legacy of secrets, and the high cost of truth-telling… powerful and utterly engrossing.”
“A stunner of a family memoir – a harrowing, sometimes mordantly funny account of the wages of secrecy bred of war and dislocation… a page-turner of uncommon valor.”
“Powerful … a shattering account of growing up in a family that has survived genocide.”
“To this day, I don’t even know what my mother’s real name is.” Helen Fremont was raised as a Roman Catholic. It wasn’t until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish – Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth.
Friends of Writers 45th Anniversary Reading April 24, 2021
April 24, 2021
Helen Fremont and Tracy Winn host a reading celebrating the 45th Anniversary of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers
Helen Fremont and Tracy Winn host a reading of New England Poets and Writers in celebration of the 45th Anniversary of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Helen Fremont Marriage
7:30 pm – 8:30 p.m.
BookPage selects The Escape Artist as a Best Book of 2020
December, 2020
BookPage selects THE ESCAPE ARTIST as a Best Book of 2020!
BookPage has selected The Escape Artist as a Best Book of 2020:
“When Fremont’s father died and her mother and sister legally excised her from the family, it opened up a lifetime’s worth of secrets, betrayal, trauma and lies. As far as family memoirs go, The Escape Artist is as twisted, insightful and beautifully rendered as they come.”
Museum of Jewish Heritage Book Talk
Watch the video of Helen's book talk about THE ESCAPE ARTIST hosted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage...
Helen Fremont Biography
Thank you to the Museum of Jewish Heritage for my book talk with Helen Epstein about THE ESCAPE ARTIST.
Watch the videohere.
The Aims of Argument
Prize Stories 1994
Why I’m Still Married
Helen Fremont Sister
Harvard Review
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Helen Fremont Memoir
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