Erythra Thalassa

Annette Libeskind Berkovits (annetteberkovits.com) was born in Kyrgyzstan and grew up in postwar Poland and the fledgling state of Israel before coming to America at age sixteen. In her three-decade career with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, she spearheaded the institution's nationwide and worldwide science education programs. Her achievements include the first-ever agreement to bring environmental education to China's schools. The National Science Foundation has recognized her outstanding leadership in the field.
Now retired, she is pursuing her life-long love of writing. Her stories and poems have appeared in Silk Road Review: a Literary Crossroads; Persimmon Tree and in American Gothic: a New Chamber Opera. Her first memoir, In the Unlikeliest of Places, a story of her remarkable father's survival, was published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in September 2014. Berkovits has completed two other non-fiction manuscripts and is working on a poetry collection as well as a novel.

A searing portrayal of a mother's anguish over the sudden hemorrhagic stroke of her son--devoted father of two young girls--rendering him a quadriplegic in the prime of his life. An intimate glimpse of a world shattered by stroke, in which each poem not only illuminates but reimagines life with hope and acceptance.


Any parent who has watched a beloved child struggle with a medical disaster, or suffering intractable drug dependency will easily recognize and relate to the sadness, grief, guilt, the struggle to understand, and to help when one is often helpless. Through a succinct poetic exploration,readers will be heartened by the promise of survival, the faith in science, the mystery of the human body and, most of all, the courage that a gravely disabled child can bestow upon a parent.