Book excerpt: After a tragic loss, an American woman investigates her birth family in Paris: “The novel’s twists and turns are wonderfully unexpected” (Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers). In her early forties, Emma has recently lost her husband and daughter to a tragic auto accident. When her elderly aunt visits her Indiana home to provide comfort, and instead blurts out the news that Emma was adopted, a new kind of shock sets in. Soon, a still-mourning Emma finds herself flying to Paris, where she will discover the twin brother whose existence she never knew about, and the identity of her birth parents—a White Russian film star of the 1920s and a French Stalinist. A story about identity and the relationship between art and life, My Life as a Silent Movie is “a beautiful, evocative novel [that] melds the magic of old movies with the redemptive power of family” (Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise). “In this sharply drawn chronicle of grief, a woman reassembles her identity through her father’s art and her brother’s tenuous offer of a new life . . . Kercheval delves deeply into the rawest of emotions and the most wrenching of choices, richly detailing each twist and turn with grace.” —Kirkus Reviews