Secret Losses

About the Book

A novel is an opportunity for a story about the lives, thoughts, feelings and actions of specific characters to reveal general truths about the human condition. Secret Losses is a novel about a specific family with a secret; but it is therefore about all families with secrets — and it is a rare family that does not have its secrets.

Secret Losses tells the story of an exiled grandfather, and how the secret of him was finally revealed. It tells of his life of loss to disease, disaster, and divorce, and it tells how a woman's scarred face and discontentment from a childhood "accident" infected the unsuspecting family. It also tells how a Welsh family heritage, lost by the secrecy, was discovered by the grandson in his struggle to understand the secret and its effects on him and the surviving family.

Secrets in families don't work. Even if the secret is kept, the consequences of the secrecy itself will still influence the family in unpredictable and insidious ways. Secrets create circles of conspiratorial silence, dividing the families into ins and outs, distorting the perceptions of those shut out who do not have a complete or honest view of the family or themselves.

The secret in Secret Losses led to losses in at least three generations, with possibly more still to come. The secret prevented a grandson, the sole outsider, from knowing not only his grandfather but also an entire branch of his family, including his Welsh heritage. The secret hid from his view the devastating effects that typhoid fever, two deadly railroad accidents, child abuse, and divorce had wreaked upon half his family, and thus, without his knowledge or understanding, upon him. Thus it is, in one way or another, with all family secrets.

After family secrets are revealed, the deleterious effects must be reconciled and repaired by some positive action to restore wholeness to the family. In Secret Losses, the grandfather, though long deceased, is returned to his family, the losses are grieved, and the void in the grandson's life is filled, not only for him but for his children and grandchildren as well. Finally, then, he is able to say, "It's okay now."

About the Author

John Robert Dixon is Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was born in Ohio to a Welsh mother and English father, and lives now in rural Massachusetts with his Italian wife and golden retriever, Gwyneth. John has two children and four grandchildren.