Mark Mirsky is a miracle worker. He has the tears of comedy, the laughter of tragedy, and the speaking voice of life-all in a stylization that lets us know instantly we are in the presence of a great teller of tales. I hope never to miss a word he writes. John Ciardi Mark Jay Mirsky's first novel Thou Worm Jacob was a best seller in Boston. His second novel about the streets of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan, Blue Hill Avenue, was "New and Recommended" in The New York Times. Boston.com listed it together with the work of Melville, Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as one of the "100...

A Mother's Steps: A Meditation on Silence is the novelist Mark Jay Mirsky's attempt to understand the life of a mother who was reluctant to tell him any details about her family or herself. Concealing much of her strong affection for her son, she began to reveal it after learning that she was dangerously ill. The book tries to un-riddle the silence that Ruth S. Mirsky drew over her childhood, adolescence and the first years of her marriage. She remained a mystery to her son after her death at the age of fifty-six in April of 1968. Why had she spoken so little about her mother and never about...