"A gripping family saga that reveals profound truth about generational trauma, grief, and healing. We Don't Talk About That is like a literary atlas, a detailed mapping of a sprawling family's path through the wake of tragedy."-Vince Granata, author of Everything Is Fine
"Schoepp uses careful research and compassionate reflection to trace the echoes of trauma across multiple generations of her own family's history, inviting readers to consider the enduring power of memory and silence-as well as the possibility of healing."-Alexandra A. Chan, author of In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic
When Amanda Schoepp was thirteen, she took a sleeper train with her grandfather from Los Angeles to New Orleans. On that trip, he shared how his parents died. It wasn't cancer or old age or pickled livers-it was murder-suicide.
For him to share this was rare because, following the 1963 tragedy, an unspoken agreement became oath among immediate family: Never discuss it.
Avoidance was seemingly easier than facing the pain, and the elders passed that belief on through generations.
Until now.
Leveraging a decade of research and interviews with her wonderfully dysfunctional Cajun family, Schoepp illuminates for the first time the realities of her lineage, exploring the complexities of generational trauma and the ways a singular event can shape the future.
We Don't Talk About That follows her Southern family's overnight upheaval, the unbounding resilience that finds its way through the cracks, and how Schoepp uniquely fits into the greater patchwork of it all.