Axiomatic -- Maria Tumarkin

Staff Pick

Does time really heal all wounds—or only pass them on? Does history actually repeat itself? For whom? When? In a series of case studies that shift the focus from the motives and humanity of the rescuer to those of the people needing help, Tumarkin’s passionate and compassionate study of trauma explores “what …humans do with their pain” and dramatically shows that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Why did one child survivor of the Holocaust become a dynamic force in the entertainment world while another landed in jail for trying to protect her grandson? For both, their early experiences remained a daily reality, permeating their lives with the unmistakable “atmosphere” of the Holocaust. Even more difficult to explain is suicide. Do children of parents who killed themselves feel compelled to repeat the last act of their parent? The fear that one suicide will spark another inhibits even raising the subject, and Tumarkin’s chapter on a series of young peoples’ suicides within one community is both heartbreaking and revelatory. If suicide seems to run in families, can it run in a school, that loco parentis? Yet “there’s no space for a suicide in a school’s institutional memory”—even as teachers state that it’s the students they lose, not the success stories, they always remember. Grounded in “the bottomlessness of human endurance,” this is one of the many hard-won—not pat—truths Tumarkin uncovers in this riveting and troubling book.

Axiomatic By Maria Tumarkin Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781945492297
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Transit Books - September 3rd, 2019