Eleanors Rebellion

Eleanor's Rebellion is the extraordinary story of a man who discovered in middle age that almost nothing he had grown up believing about his parents was true. When at the age of forty David Siff learned--in the first of a series of shocks--that he was adopted, he began a roller-coaster journey into his family's past. He discovered that his biological father was not the man who had raised him, but someone he had never met: the actor Van Heflin. He discovered that he had been born out of wedlock, placed in an orphanage at birth, and subsequently adopted by his own mother. He learned that his mother had not been the contented homebody he had believed her to be. He discovered the ambitions and frustrations of the woman who had given birth to him--the adventurous, rebellious young Eleanor, in determined pursuit of a new and better world and an acting career, who suddenly detoured into marriage for the sake of her child. He discovered the roots of his puzzling behaviors, casting his own acting career in a new light. In his account of the fascinating and rocky process by which he finally came to know his mother--moving from shock to bitterness to an increasingly profound appreciation of her life--David Siff has given us a heartfelt and enriching book.