"Half in Shade rewards a leisurely reading, with not only, as Kitchen promises, 'patterns of American immigration and opportunities,' but an experience that may open the eyes to the treasure chest of the American experience found among those stepchildren of the arts—the snapshots. Kitchen's book lets you know what a keen eye coupled with an alert and sensitive intelligence can see."—Publishers Weekly
"Judith Kitchen has written a book that is at once clear and accessible and at the same time insistently complex. Her effortlessly constructed hybrids make Half in Shade part memoir, part speculation, part essay, a demonstration of the interactive art of seeing, and finally for me, a beautifully sustained meditation. It is at that meditative level that the book's potent, unsentimental emotive power gathers." —Stuart Dybek
"Half in Shade is mysterious and brave, written with wit, humor, stabbing insight, and in prose that reverberates long after you turn the last page." —Dinah Lenney
When Judith Kitchen inherited boxes of family photographs and scrapbooks, they sparked curiosity and speculation. Piecing together her memories with the physical evidence in the photos, along with a sense of history and a willingness to speculate, Kitchen explores the gray areas between the present and the past, family and self, certainty and uncertainty. The result is a lyrical, ennobling anatomy of a heritage, family, mother-daughter relationships, and the recovery from an illness that captures with precision the forces of the heart and mind when "none of us knows what lies beyond the moment, outside the frame."
