What do you think?
Rate this book
Win a free print copy of this book!
19 days and 00:06:27
15 copies available
U.S. only
A Family Across Town: My Father's Double Life, A Memoir
Not yet published
Expected 19 Jan 27Win a free print copy of this book!
19 days and 00:06:27
15 copies available
U.S. only
For readers drawn to complex family narratives, a contemporary memoir about uncovering a life-altering family secret.
A Family Across Town is a memoir about secrecy, legacy, and the long shadow of a father’s hidden life. Aynah Askanas and her siblings grew up in a Los Angeles suburb with a pediatrician father whose frequent absences were explained away as "hospital emergency calls." Only in adulthood did they learn the for decades, their father had maintained a second family across town.
With that revelation, the fragments of their childhood fell into place--their father’s missed holidays, secret phone calls, and irrational refusal to bring them to hospital and office social gatherings where colleagues knew only his other family. All were part of a carefully managed double life. Living on the inside of this secret took a toll. Their father endured constant anxiety and dependence on sleeping pills. Their mother struggled with depression as she navigated a relationship built on deception. The siblings carried the emotional consequences into adulthoods marked by insomnia, anxiety, and a persistent sense of something perverse being withheld.
A powerful, clear-eyed, and compassionate memoir, A Family Across Town examines what children absorb when truth is concealed and what it takes to reckon with the past after deep-rooted secrets emerge.
A Family Across Town is a memoir about secrecy, legacy, and the long shadow of a father’s hidden life. Aynah Askanas and her siblings grew up in a Los Angeles suburb with a pediatrician father whose frequent absences were explained away as "hospital emergency calls." Only in adulthood did they learn the for decades, their father had maintained a second family across town.
With that revelation, the fragments of their childhood fell into place--their father’s missed holidays, secret phone calls, and irrational refusal to bring them to hospital and office social gatherings where colleagues knew only his other family. All were part of a carefully managed double life. Living on the inside of this secret took a toll. Their father endured constant anxiety and dependence on sleeping pills. Their mother struggled with depression as she navigated a relationship built on deception. The siblings carried the emotional consequences into adulthoods marked by insomnia, anxiety, and a persistent sense of something perverse being withheld.
A powerful, clear-eyed, and compassionate memoir, A Family Across Town examines what children absorb when truth is concealed and what it takes to reckon with the past after deep-rooted secrets emerge.
- GenresMemoir
256 pages, Paperback
Expected publication January 19, 2027
About the author
Aynah V. Askanas
2 books14 followersAynah V. Askanas is a retired lawyer and college English instructor who has written countless legal briefs and graded even more English papers. She has also published numerous articles throughout her career in prominent medical-legal publications, the College English Journal, and, most recently, in the Mouthful of Salt Literary Journal. A Family Across Town, her debut memoir, will be released in January 2027. She lives with her husband in Ventura, California and enjoys a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 25, 2026
Wow. Firstly, what beautiful writing.
To take a subject as difficult, complicated and painful as Aynah V. Askanas’s and turn it into something so beautifully written is an achievement in itself. A Family Across Town is a deeply personal and moving memoir, and I was completely drawn into her story.
Although it’s on the shorter side page-wise, it packs the ultimate punch. There is so much emotion, honesty and depth within these pages, and I found myself thinking about the story long after I finished reading.
I absolutely loved it. A beautifully written, poignant and powerful memoir that proves you don’t need hundreds of pages to leave a lasting impression.
A big thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for the ARC
To take a subject as difficult, complicated and painful as Aynah V. Askanas’s and turn it into something so beautifully written is an achievement in itself. A Family Across Town is a deeply personal and moving memoir, and I was completely drawn into her story.
Although it’s on the shorter side page-wise, it packs the ultimate punch. There is so much emotion, honesty and depth within these pages, and I found myself thinking about the story long after I finished reading.
I absolutely loved it. A beautifully written, poignant and powerful memoir that proves you don’t need hundreds of pages to leave a lasting impression.
A big thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for the ARC
Review of advance copy received from Author
This memoir had me from page one; I couldn’t put it down. Askanas writes about how her father’s secret, his other family, impacted her and her siblings throughout their childhood and as adults when the truth finally emerged.
I admire Askanas’ honesty and openness in telling her story, as well as her ability over time to acknowledge the nuance in her relationship with her father. While she despised his disrespect for her beloved mother and how he deceived the family, she was ultimately able to recognize that her personal relationship with her father was not all bad. He loved her and, in her own way, she loved him.
Kudos to Askanas for her courage in speaking out. In doing so, she offers comfort to all those who suffer as the result of family secrets and dysfunction. Her memoir helps them see that they are not alone.
I admire Askanas’ honesty and openness in telling her story, as well as her ability over time to acknowledge the nuance in her relationship with her father. While she despised his disrespect for her beloved mother and how he deceived the family, she was ultimately able to recognize that her personal relationship with her father was not all bad. He loved her and, in her own way, she loved him.
Kudos to Askanas for her courage in speaking out. In doing so, she offers comfort to all those who suffer as the result of family secrets and dysfunction. Her memoir helps them see that they are not alone.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This highly readable book was a fast read. It also covered a unique memoir topic—a parent with a secret second family. Author Aynah Askanas’ father was a New York born Jewish pediatrician who got two girlfriends pregnant around the same time in Minnesota in the 1950s, while doing his residency. He married neither of them but moved both of them and the children to California when he left for a job with a pediatric group practice. The author’s mother was also Jewish, so we are not talking about individuals who belonged to a religion where more than one wife was allowed, at least not in modern times.
The mothers knew about each other, but the children had no idea about the situation until they were in their 30s. The other family, which consisted of two daughters, lived 10 miles away in a nicer neighborhood in a nicer home with a pool, and was the family the doctor’s colleagues knew about. The doctor would spend so many nights a week at one home and the rest at the other. Of course, if he wasn’t home, it was said it was because he was needed at the hospital.
A most interesting predicament that could have made a most interesting memoir, except around halfway through, it became apparent the author had an agenda. The agenda involved convincing readers that The Secret was responsible for all negative things in her family—the emotional problems anyone had, such as anxiety or insomnia; the physical health problems anyone had, including early death; and the bad things anyone in her family did or experienced.
What happened when the author and her younger sister found out about The Secret when they were adults? They met with their father separately and both angrily told him he should kill himself. When he told the author he was not going to do that, she said that was because he was narcissistic. Hence, it was sort of laughable when the two sisters got together at a later date in a restaurant and the author asked her sister, a psychologist, what mental problems she believed their father had.
Her sister said he was both narcissistic and had antisocial personality disorder, and then went on to describe the signs of the latter. Only problem with that was it didn’t sound like their father at all, not the way the author described him throughout her book. Moreover, it seems like someone who tells another person to commit suicide would be more likely to be narcissistic and have ASPD. One might point out, too, unlike the fathers in some other contemporary memoirs, their father did not turn out to be a serial killer.
This is not to condone having two “wives”, or to suggest family secrets and lies never cause emotional problems. They certainly can and that has been documented in various studies, both in the fields of psychology and sociology. Yet both a child and an adult can make decisions as to how such secrets and lies affect them. Moreover, an adult child, like the author, should have realized the relationship between her mother and father was strictly between the two of them, and some parents do indeed have secrets. Are they always obligated to tell their children? Are they ever obligated to tell their children?
Knowing The Secret as children would have caused the children in the two families incredible stress, always fearing their friends and everyone else might find out. Even knowing in their 20s may have left them too focused on their parents and the past; instead of focused on their future, such as on their careers and their own love relationships; all the things young adult children need to be focused on . . . as opposed to sitting around speculating on what their parents' sex life was like, as Ms. Askanas did when she found out.
Blaming her father for victimizing her mother was absurd, too. Her mother agreed to the arrangement when they all moved away from Minnesota decades earlier. She followed him to Minnesota because she wanted him to marry her and her parents wanted her to marry a doctor. She had been married once before and had a young son. When he told her he wanted to marry his other pregnant girlfriend, who also worked in the medical field and shared many of his interests, her mother threatened to commit suicide. She was no innocent victim.
This is the type of story that would have been fascinating if told from the point of view of all involved--both mothers, all the children and the father. Of course, the author could not do that, unless she wrote the story as a novel, which might have been a much better idea. Maybe she would have had a better chance convincing a fiction reader of all the mystical like powers of The Secret. Unfortunately, as a memoir, this story simply seemed no different than so many other contemporary memoirs where the memoirist tries to blame a parent and their childhood for all of their own sins and unhappiness, as well as for the sins and unhappiness of others in the family.
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the author or publisher.)
The mothers knew about each other, but the children had no idea about the situation until they were in their 30s. The other family, which consisted of two daughters, lived 10 miles away in a nicer neighborhood in a nicer home with a pool, and was the family the doctor’s colleagues knew about. The doctor would spend so many nights a week at one home and the rest at the other. Of course, if he wasn’t home, it was said it was because he was needed at the hospital.
A most interesting predicament that could have made a most interesting memoir, except around halfway through, it became apparent the author had an agenda. The agenda involved convincing readers that The Secret was responsible for all negative things in her family—the emotional problems anyone had, such as anxiety or insomnia; the physical health problems anyone had, including early death; and the bad things anyone in her family did or experienced.
What happened when the author and her younger sister found out about The Secret when they were adults? They met with their father separately and both angrily told him he should kill himself. When he told the author he was not going to do that, she said that was because he was narcissistic. Hence, it was sort of laughable when the two sisters got together at a later date in a restaurant and the author asked her sister, a psychologist, what mental problems she believed their father had.
Her sister said he was both narcissistic and had antisocial personality disorder, and then went on to describe the signs of the latter. Only problem with that was it didn’t sound like their father at all, not the way the author described him throughout her book. Moreover, it seems like someone who tells another person to commit suicide would be more likely to be narcissistic and have ASPD. One might point out, too, unlike the fathers in some other contemporary memoirs, their father did not turn out to be a serial killer.
This is not to condone having two “wives”, or to suggest family secrets and lies never cause emotional problems. They certainly can and that has been documented in various studies, both in the fields of psychology and sociology. Yet both a child and an adult can make decisions as to how such secrets and lies affect them. Moreover, an adult child, like the author, should have realized the relationship between her mother and father was strictly between the two of them, and some parents do indeed have secrets. Are they always obligated to tell their children? Are they ever obligated to tell their children?
Knowing The Secret as children would have caused the children in the two families incredible stress, always fearing their friends and everyone else might find out. Even knowing in their 20s may have left them too focused on their parents and the past; instead of focused on their future, such as on their careers and their own love relationships; all the things young adult children need to be focused on . . . as opposed to sitting around speculating on what their parents' sex life was like, as Ms. Askanas did when she found out.
Blaming her father for victimizing her mother was absurd, too. Her mother agreed to the arrangement when they all moved away from Minnesota decades earlier. She followed him to Minnesota because she wanted him to marry her and her parents wanted her to marry a doctor. She had been married once before and had a young son. When he told her he wanted to marry his other pregnant girlfriend, who also worked in the medical field and shared many of his interests, her mother threatened to commit suicide. She was no innocent victim.
This is the type of story that would have been fascinating if told from the point of view of all involved--both mothers, all the children and the father. Of course, the author could not do that, unless she wrote the story as a novel, which might have been a much better idea. Maybe she would have had a better chance convincing a fiction reader of all the mystical like powers of The Secret. Unfortunately, as a memoir, this story simply seemed no different than so many other contemporary memoirs where the memoirist tries to blame a parent and their childhood for all of their own sins and unhappiness, as well as for the sins and unhappiness of others in the family.
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the author or publisher.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I had the privilege of reading an early draft of A Family Across Town, shared with me by Aynah Askanas. Oh my goodness—this story both ripped my heart out and kept me wondering what in the world her father could possibly do next to upset the family cart.
The secrets. The mystery. The missed holidays and unexplained absences. The phone calls. The things the children sensed but could never quite understand. And then the extraordinary revelation that their father, a respected pediatrician, had maintained a second family across town for decades.
What stayed with me most was not simply the shock of discovering his double life, but the emotional price his secrets extracted from everyone around him. Aynah beautifully explores what happens to children when they know something isn't right but aren't given the truth—and how those buried family secrets can follow us well into adulthood.
I found myself heartbroken for the children, fascinated by the complicated family dynamics, and continually asking, How could a father possibly keep this going?
Aynah tells this deeply personal story with remarkable compassion and clarity. A Family Across Town is ultimately about far more than one man's secret life. It is about family, truth, betrayal, resilience, and the long shadow that secrets can cast across generations.
A fascinating and unforgettable memoir.
The secrets. The mystery. The missed holidays and unexplained absences. The phone calls. The things the children sensed but could never quite understand. And then the extraordinary revelation that their father, a respected pediatrician, had maintained a second family across town for decades.
What stayed with me most was not simply the shock of discovering his double life, but the emotional price his secrets extracted from everyone around him. Aynah beautifully explores what happens to children when they know something isn't right but aren't given the truth—and how those buried family secrets can follow us well into adulthood.
I found myself heartbroken for the children, fascinated by the complicated family dynamics, and continually asking, How could a father possibly keep this going?
Aynah tells this deeply personal story with remarkable compassion and clarity. A Family Across Town is ultimately about far more than one man's secret life. It is about family, truth, betrayal, resilience, and the long shadow that secrets can cast across generations.
A fascinating and unforgettable memoir.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I could not put this book down!
The author tells her remarkable story about her father's decades of a secret double life with another family that lived just 10 miles away. A true-life story of close calls of discovery, deception, lies, secrets, and unanswered questions. From her earliest childhood memories to the shocking revelation and its aftermath, readers are taken on an emotional journey through the lives of everyone affected.
What makes this read so powerful is the author's ability to portray her loving Mother's journey, and each her family members, with compassion, honesty, and authenticity, revealing how the discovery of the secret shaped their identities, relationships, and futures.
I was captivated from the beginning to the end. I highly recommend this unforgettable memoir.
The author tells her remarkable story about her father's decades of a secret double life with another family that lived just 10 miles away. A true-life story of close calls of discovery, deception, lies, secrets, and unanswered questions. From her earliest childhood memories to the shocking revelation and its aftermath, readers are taken on an emotional journey through the lives of everyone affected.
What makes this read so powerful is the author's ability to portray her loving Mother's journey, and each her family members, with compassion, honesty, and authenticity, revealing how the discovery of the secret shaped their identities, relationships, and futures.
I was captivated from the beginning to the end. I highly recommend this unforgettable memoir.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This amazing memoir delves into the significant choices the author's parents and the effect on their lives and their siblings' lives. With careful storytelling, the memoir reveals the complex family history, showing how these decisions led to the heart-wrenching results we see when the missing piece is finally revealed. The author's honesty and authenticity create a deep connection with readers, making you think how you would react to the story's twists and turns. This fascinating memoir is an engaging and thought-provoking read that will stay with you for a long time.
Review of advance copy received from Author
The author did an excellent job setting up the structure and with the pacing. I just kept thinking one more chapter and before I knew it, I finished this book! That is a rarity for me. It usually takes me weeks to finish a book. I’m astonished at the author’s talent and willingness to explore such a complex family expose. It really is heroic and deeply moving.
I highly recommend, hence the 5 star rating. If you’re a Memoir reader you will LOVE this one!
I highly recommend, hence the 5 star rating. If you’re a Memoir reader you will LOVE this one!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This bool was very well written and because of that, it was heart wrenching. Aynah was raised by her mother for her entire life, and although her biological father financially supported her and her siblings extra curricular activities as well as educational costs...nothing can replace a father's love. This book has characters that everyone can find relatable, and also has the "evil step-mother" who tried to tarnish the family even in the most emotional of times.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Very engaging about an unbelievable situation you can feel the hearts of the characters while watching the abuse and confusion generated by all the lies I really cared about this family and felt so sorry for what they endured
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Author
A raw and deeply moving reflection about the rippling impact of family secrets. Smartly told and even funny at times within a subject that's heavy on the surface but has so much nuance. I couldn't put it down once I started and highly recommend to anyone especially memoir lovers!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews