The Tell by Linda I. Meyers
Grand Prize, 2024 North Street Book Prize Competition
Linda Meyers was twenty-eight and the mother of three little boys when her mother, after a lifetime of threats, killed herself. Staggered by conflicting feelings of relief and remorse, Linda believed that the best way to give meaning to her mother's death was to make changes to her own life. Bolstered by the women’s movement of the seventies, she left her marriage, went to college, earned her doctorate, and established a fulfilling career. Written with irony and humor and sprinkled with Yiddish, The Tell, Grand Prize winner of the 2024 North Street Book Prize competition, is one woman's inspirational story of before and after, and ultimately of emancipation and purpose.
"The Tell is deeply satisfying because Meyers took charge of her healing in a way that many inheritors of intergenerational damage never do. She summarizes the family dynamics with clarity and empathy, but neither moralizes about forgiveness nor dwells in bitterness."
—Jendi Reiter, final judge of the North Street Book Prize (read the full critique)
"In this vivid and immensely enjoyable memoir, we encounter the lost world of Jewish Brooklyn, crazy parents, a crazy husband, and a protagonist/narrator who can't help being a good girl. Woody Allen and Ralph Lauren make appearances: somehow it all fits."
—Philip Lopate (essayist and film critic)
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Dr. Linda I. Meyers is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in NYC. She has published in Alligator Juniper, Post Road, and The Manifest Station. The Tell is her first book. Dividing her time between NYC and a country house in upstate New York, she is at work on a second memoir for which she is seeking representation. Working title: Walking to Zabars.
