Past Forgetting: My Memory Lost and Found

Each morning her husband's face was a surprise. She'd search the house for her children, forgetting her son and daughter were grown with families of their own.

Doctors told her she would never write again. With humor and driving force, Jill Robinson takes us with her -- from an early trip to Oxford to discuss memory with a professor, to a Los Angeles assignment for Vanity Fair and her rediscovery there of a past she never understood.

An exploration of the connection between memory and creativity, celebrity and anonymity, loss and discovery, Past Forgetting teems with reminiscences of friendships in art, literature, and show business, from school pal Robert Redford to Barbra Streisand, John Lahr, and scores of others.

Jill Robinson recreates and redefines a life and loves from the shards of recollection.

In interviews with prominent memory experts, she pursues a quest along new pathways to remembering, discovering new techniques to stimulate recall.

Past Forgetting is a guide to memory's trails and canyons and shows a determination not only to retrieve, but also to rehabilitate and redefine a life.