Twice Born: Finding My Father In the Margins of Biography

by Hester Kaplan

A deeply reflective memoir weaving together the personal story of Hester Kaplan’s acclaimed biographer father and his fraught effect on her artistic development with a rich portrait of twentieth century intellectual life and a meditation on family intimacy, identity, and the art of writing

Twice Born opens with the death of Hester’s father, Justin Kaplan, known for his award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Despite his relatively prolific output, Justin rarely wrote, or said, much about himself—even to his daughter. Standing at his open casket, Hester has the realization that while alive, her father never looked her in the eyes.

Hester takes on the challenge of piecing together as intimate a biography of her own father as possible, comparing his story to the lives of his biographical subjects and dissecting the various personas he presents to the world—from which the name “dad,” “daddy,” or even “father” is conspicuously and painfully absent. Parallel to Justin’s story runs Hester’s own journey of development as a writer and a thinker, which begins in the shadow of not only her talented father, but also her novelist mother, and the fiercely protective union the two of them had built, often to the exclusion of their own children.

In sensitive, intimate writing, Kaplan paints a rich picture of the twentieth century literary world that she grew up in, all while reflecting on the deceptive nature of memory, the loneliness of creative pursuits, and the dovetailing paradoxes of biographical and autobiographical writing.

Genres: Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 14, 2025

About the author

I write and I teach writing, and I love to talk about books and writing. I come from a family of writers, and have seen how much publishing and book promotion has changed. I really like the ability to talk to readers through sites like Goodreads, and I'd love to hear from you.
"The Tell" is about marriage--a great interest of mine--and the limits of knowing another person. It is also about addiction and lies, and the recovery of trust.
Let me know what you think about the book!

Reviews

[Kimma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twice born, twice brave: living through and writing down her experiences, in her inimitable way, Hes models what one might do with this arduous business of becoming.

Where she could have just rendered the Cambridge zeitgeist of her childhood, she weds it to the family dynamic to draw characters -- including that house with its "wild heaps of books on the floor of the sunporch as though an earthquake had shaken them off their shelves." Where she could have recounted observations of her father, she reveals the emotional world of inquiry into what they mean about his humanity, her own, and their shaping.

Her stylistic choices in engaging her father on the page are moving and dazzling. The imagining at the end of the first chapter surged through me, propelling me through the book. "I am compelled by the demands of narrative to tell the story of a life, why and how it happened, and how it felt to live that life." I likewise was compelled, by how that story is told.

The memoirs I like best are those in which the author illuminates a path, holding insight like a lantern, writing a quiet urging to follow, albeit at a remove. In this one, I now see for certain our "developmental years" needn't end. I see what mettle reckoning requires. And I see a way to do it.

[Kat Harnisch]

I read the first five chapters and the last chapter and it was interesting. Very slow paced. Unfortunately this was assigned for class and I didn’t get to finish it before the author talk. The author was great to listen to talk about her work, though!

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review: Twice Born: Finding My Father In the Margins of Biography by Hester Kaplan

Hester Kaplan’s Twice Born is a piercingly introspective memoir that excavates the silences between a daughter and her celebrated biographer father, Justin Kaplan, while interrogating the very nature of biographical truth. As a woman and avid reader of life-writing, I was profoundly moved by Kaplan’s unflinching examination of paternal absence—not as physical abandonment, but as emotional and creative withholding. The revelation that her father never looked her in the eyes becomes a metaphor for the memoir’s central tension: how do we see those who refuse to be seen, especially when their professional lives are dedicated to illuminating others (like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman)?

What resonated most deeply was Kaplan’s layered exploration of gendered creative inheritance. Her struggle to forge a writing identity under the shadow of both her father’s intellectual legacy and her novelist mother’s fierce partnership with him evoked visceral recognition. The passages describing her mother’s protective union with Justin—a bond that excluded their children—stirred complex emotions about how patriarchal literary dynasties often sacrifice maternal connection for artistic collaboration. Kaplan’s prose, lyrical yet precise, mirrors the biographical fragments she pieces together: sentences are carefully chiseled, yet ache with unresolved longing.

However, the memoir occasionally falters in balancing its dual narratives. While Justin’s story is richly contextualized within 20th-century intellectual circles, Kaplan’s own artistic journey sometimes feels secondary, her hard-won voice overshadowed by his enigma. A deeper interrogation of how her mother’s novelistic influence shaped her (beyond mere exclusion) would have strengthened the feminist critique implicit in her project. Additionally, the meta-commentary on biography-as-genre, though brilliant, risks abstraction in later chapters, distancing readers from the raw intimacy of earlier sections.

Strengths:

-Emotional Archaeology: A masterclass in excavating familial and creative silences with nuance.
-Feminist Undercurrents: Exposes how literary legacies are gendered, often at daughters’ expense.
-Stylistic Brilliance: Kaplan’s prose oscillates between scholarly rigor and poetic vulnerability.

Critiques:

-Narrative Imbalance: Her personal writerly evolution warrants equal depth to Justin’s portrait.
-Missed Intersections: More explicit engagement with motherhood’s role in her artistry would enrich the critique.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) – A luminous, if uneven, meditation on the wounds and wisdom inherited from creative giants.

Thank you to Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull and Edelweiss for providing a free advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Final Thought: Kaplan’s greatest achievement is turning her father’s avoidance into a mirror. In scrutinizing his refusal to meet her gaze, she compels us to ask: Who gets to be biographed, and who must settle for the margins?

[Gail Jeidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hester Kaplan finds herself through discovering her father in this compelling and vulnerable memoir/biography.

There's so much to engage with in this nuanced exploration of her father, Justin Kaplan, an accomplished biographer who I had not heard of before this reading. (I am acquainted with the author Hester Kaplan through her novels and as an MFA program instructor at Lesley University. I am also acquainted with the books of her mother, Anne Bernays, a guest instructor at Lesley during a term I attended.)

Hester wrote "Twice Born" after her father's death. The work inspires me to seek out Justin Kaplin's biographies, particularly "Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain", excerpts of which are interspersed. The weave and structure of the book is creative and notable. Hester picks and sifts through her father's life; at times I was confused as to which conversation happened and which was imagined, but soon I was grounded with a line like "I am now older than my father." I admire how Hester pulled this all together.

Hester K. grew up with her famed writer parents in a privileged and connected world in Cambridge, Mass., where neighbors included Julia Child over one corner of her backyard, John Kenneth Galbraith a few doors down, a Nobel prize winner on the street, and a multitude of literati and intellectuals all around. (An oh-so-erudite world foreign to a reader-writer like myself who grew up on rural route four with the egg lady on the corner, the County Farm across the way, and the gun-crazed kid up the hill.)

The book is a deep dive into Justin Kaplan's work habits, social habits, his dynamic with her mother, her sisters and especially Hester and her writerly inclinations. Hester's father kept to himself, protected his writing time and space, but loosened up now and then to play with the kids, party with peers, even recklessly set off firecrackers in one scene. There are incongruencies in his character, which make him all the more interesting. Is he a recluse? An outsider? A party guy? Is he a loving dad, maybe just a quiet one? It reminded me a bit of Jane Fonda's relationship with her father. And sometimes I wondered, "Did Hester really get it right about her dad?" Hmmm.

I found myself analyzing the daughter (the writer) as much as understanding her dad. Maybe that was the point.

Justin Kaplan underwent a great deal of psychotherapy throughout his life, some to cope with the profound loss of losing both parents in early childhood. I appreciated the mention of this and slices of wisdom from Freud, Hester's great, great uncle.

The book dropped many many names of famous people who inhabited the family's lives as well as juicy stories of others, not specified by name. Those were a bit like 'easter eggs' in Taylor Swift's lyrics; I found myself snooping to find out who was the person who hosted that party or committed that crime. It's all findable on google!

The book is interesting throughout. I could read this again, slower next time, and surely get even more out of it. My desk is strewn with of post-it notes scribbled to include in this review. It was almost as if I was channeling the writerly systems of the inhabitants of the work.

Final notes: loved the attention to language and vocabulary throughout, and chuckled at Hester's nickname, Custard. We gain writers' lessons Hester learned from both her accomplished father and mother, not the least of which is this one from her mother. "If you want to write, observe everything."

[Allye · Rating 4 out of 5]

won a copy through goodreads giveaways - thanks to the publisher for the ARC!

I don't think I would have come across this book without the goodreads giveaway, but I'm glad I did. I haven't read any of the author's father's work, but the premise of a biography of a biographer was compelling in and of itself, and that it was a daughter writing about her father even moreso.

the opening chapter was really stunning and will feel very familiar for anyone grieving, even if the circumstances are different. Kaplan does a really good job of writing about the immediacy of grief.

to me, the beginning was probably the best part of the book, as things got murkier further in. the author is obviously a very good writer, but sometimes that good-writing-ness is obvious in a way that took me out of the narrative, thinking more about technical aspects of the writing than the emotional impact (although this also feels very connected to the author's relationship to her father and his relationship to writing - it became clear why she writes the way she does).

about halfway through, she begins to frequently add in imagined conversations with her father after he's died to get his opinions on the book in progress (the one you are reading), and while I think this device was occasionally used to interesting and elucidating ends, sometimes it was not clearly defined, and at least once I had to go back and figure out if this was a real conversation that had happened in life, or if it was a hypothetical one after death. (maybe this is my own reading comprehension issue though? I was also sick with COVID for part of reading this book, and I will admit my brain cells were not at 100%)

there are many literary quotes dispersed throughout, some which feel at home (like words from Justin Kaplan or one of his biography subjects) but some that don't, and on certain pages it felt like there was more writing from other writers than there was from the author herself. this is definitely a stylistic choice, though, and while it didn't work for me the entire time, I can understand it as a tool to pull more voices to connect the broader theme of writing and writers.

there was a lot of name-dropping and interesting tidbits about literary figures sprinkled throughout - I felt very jealous about the idea of growing up in a literary family, even though it sounded quite emotionally fraught and very chaotic in reality. I think many bookish young girls imagined having the childhood Kaplan did, complete with the old musty house full of books, getting to tag along to literary events, and a neighborhood full of academics. I know I hold a very romanticized version in my head, but I think the 11-year-old in me is desperate to spend a day being a kid in the Kaplan household, however dysfunctional it might have been.

I will say, if Hester Kaplan ever writes a book about her mother, I am so there. from the brief moments we see or hear from her in the text, she sounds fascinating and complicated, and her relationship to her daughters must be full of a million threads to pull. I'll be keeping my eye out if/when that ever materializes.

[Alexandra Grabbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

In October, I attended the Harvard Bookstore launch of Hester Kaplan’s memoir Twice Born: Finding my Father in the Margins of Biography. For anyone who is not familiar with the author, she is the daughter of Justin Kaplan who wrote Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, published in 1966. In Twice Born, Hester Kaplan takes us to Cambridge, where she grew up, as well as into the pages of her father’s acclaimed biography of Twain. There are no holds barred in her scrutiny of her father and his relationship with his inquisitive middle daughter. We follow her as a child as she sneaks into his study, a room that was off-limits, and cringe when she accidently knocks over a box of paperclips. We join her at the Kaplans’ kitchen table while Justin reads to the family after a meal. We get a whiff of the lilacs he loved, growing outside his office window, and experience Francis Avenue, “Professors’ Row,” in all seasons. I was utterly charmed by both the book with its erudite prose and the author’s chutzpah at searching for her father after his death through his nonfiction, not an easy task. She writes, “But as the biographer, my father had to hold knowledge and ignorance, past, present and future, flash back and flash forward at the same time, keep his mouth shut and allow the story to unfold. As do I to keep myself from telling my father that if he remained so hidden, his children would end up feeling they’d never known him, that he’d never known them, that this would bloom as unshakable sadness in their middle age. That I would end up writing this book about him, hoping to change the course of things.”
Considering that both parents enjoyed successful careers as authors, it is hardly a surprise that Hester Kaplan would have felt pressure to become a writer too. Her mother even gave her advice about how to approach an eventual career in writing. Hester remembers it thus: “If you want to write, observe everything, my mother, a novelist and nonfiction writer, had instructed me as a child.”
If you’re interested in the twentieth century literary world, Twice Born is for you. I enjoyed the memoir so much that I intend to listen to the audiobook as a follow-up, and then look for Hester Kaplan’s other books, which include two novels and a short story collection.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first came across this book in a review that appeared on the Literary Hub website. Since it wasn't available in my library, I had to borrow it via interlibrary loan. As a budding biographer, I hoped to glean some tips that might possibly help me in my own journey. As much as I enjoyed the book, I couldn't give it a full five stars because Justin Kaplan's daughter, while obviously trying to come to terms with who her shy and reticent father was, seems far too much in love with her own voice. The idea of comparing her father to his first biographical subject, Mark Twain (for which Justin Kaplan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize) seems promising at the outset, and it does carry the book through to the end, but Hester Kaplan writes in an almost precious tone. I don't regret reading the book, but had I actually spent money on it rather than borrowing it via interlibrary loan, I would have been disappointed.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Twice Born," a writer's story, two writers' stories, merges memoir and biography as Kaplan explores her father's work to supplement and challenge what she remembers as his daughter. Not surprisingly, it is itself deeply writerly as well as literary--if the two can be distinguished--examining how we live in words, how words are sometimes meant to conceal, and how those same words still tell our secrets obliquely.

Kaplan combines lyrical memories of childhood on a "faculty row" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with intense reading of anything and everything that might provide clues into her father's hidden early life. Her bravery and honesty about family cultures astonish as she ponders how we love our kin, with all of their flaws and all of our own.

[Emily Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book especially Hester Kaplan's childhood memories of family life and how it revolved around her brilliant and extroverted parents and their social gatherings of 20th century literary stars. I am a fan of Justin Kaplan's biography of Mark Twain, and it was really interesting and kind of moving to see the parallels, for better or worse, between the Clemens' family life and the Kaplans. This is a really well done, enjoyable read that conveys her feelings about emerging from that family as a writer in an intimate and personal (not indulgent) way, while also capturing a mid- to late-century social and intellectual culture that seems lost to time.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very introspective and touching memoir. As someone with a father who is very quiet, private, and... unknowable, I found myself relating to Kaplan's desire to find her father. Some parts of this book were painful to read. I can't help but feel sorry for her for all those times she may have felt abandoned, afraid to reach out and knock on her father's study door. I can relate to being on the edge of someone else's world, and even snooping around, just to find small pieces of things that were never openly shared.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely when it's not being indulgent

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir (part biography of her father) was interesting to me at first but then got less so. So I read the first third and then skimmed the remainder of the book.

[Mary Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book! Beautifully written, amazing stories. An interesting look at the literary social scene at the time, complex family dynamics and the unique relationship between father and daughter. Would recommend!