Lelyveld-- Abandoned by Over-Achieving Parents

In his 2005 memoir, Omaha Blues, Joseph Lelyveld (who visits Tuesday) recalls his charismatic Reform Rabbi father and his ambitious actress-scholar mother who abandoned him to be raised by other people so they could pursue their divergent ambitions. His father travelled the country in the 1940s drumming up American support for the State of Israel. His mother gratefully abandoned the duties of a clerical wife to pursue graduate studies in Shakespearean scholarship (and an extramarital affair) at Columbia University.

At various times, the boy Joseph was turned over to a Seventh Day Adventist farm family, the Jensens, in Tekamah, Nebraska, and to his Brooklyn grandparents.

An excerpt of the book's first chapter appears on the Barnes and Noble website (you'll need to scroll down).

Picture: Lelyveld (middle) with the Jensen boys.