cover image THE LEOPARD HAT: A Daughter's Story

THE LEOPARD HAT: A Daughter's Story

Valerie Steiker, . . Pantheon, $24 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-375-42101-3

"You'll get to know your mother more as you go through the different phases of your life," a wise friend consoled Steiker, a former New Yorker writer and ArtForum editor, who'd lost her mother before they could connect "woman to woman." In this finely etched memoir, Steiker relives her childhood—the family apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the Parisian escapes with her mother, the family holidays in India and Nepal—in delicious, Proustian detail. The simplest objects (e.g., a favorite dress, an ugly pepper mill, a long-lost Art Deco ring) evoke strong memories; Steiker's mother had a "mania for tchotchkes." Habits and rituals speak, too: her mother's quaint English ("will wonders never seize!"), Shabbat candle-lighting and the family shaking hands with each other before starting every trip abroad. Steiker's "show don't tell" style lets detail make her point, e.g., when her family is at a seaside cafe in Belgium, everyone's playing cards, the waffles are piled high with strawberries and whipped cream and yet many "players have blue numbers on their arms. No one speaks of it." Early in the narrative, Steiker studies a photo her mother took of her and aches for "the sensation, lost forever now, of standing and dreaming and being me before my mother's eyes." This rich, elegantly understated chronicle brings back that very feeling for Steiker—and for her readers. Agent, Tina Bennett. (May 3)

Forecast:Well-timed for Mother's Day, this memoir speaks to literary readers and those interested in Jewish culture. It should do especially well in New York.