Blessings of Failure: A Transylvanian Memoir

Blessings of Failure is a memoir of a physician – a child of communism where failure was guaranteed. She receives the Romanian secret police files about her father, code-named “The Prophet.” Stunning revelations by these documents reframe the daughter’s self-understanding.
The story moves from witnessing her parents’ tortured lives and failed ideals, to realizing their dreams in her own quest. While her father languishes in Romania’s Gulag and her mother lives under secret police harassment, the ten-year-old, politically-marked daughter of the Christian pastor is hidden and protected by her Jewish violin teacher.
In a stubborn pursuit of excellence, she keeps changing careers, countries, and marriages – one from political pressure and another for love. She excels in three consecutive professions, only to lose each as her inner quest drives her toward an ever-changing vision of becoming. All her striving comes to fruition in service to the very culture from which she fled.
Nobel Peace Laurate Elie Wiesel, her professor at Boston University, “decided” that she had to write the story of her journey from Transylvania to the United States.
This memoir explores her paradoxes, such as freedom in displacement or success in failure. Was Communist society completely evil? Does it teach valuable lessons? How free are we in freedom and how much our assumptions and fears create boundaries for us? What are the alternatives to conventional success?
The author’s outlook is broad. Not only did she live in and survive communism, but she made the best of it. She accumulated the wisdom of three successful careers in classical music, medicine, and ministry. She used it in two radically different societies, building a nationwide program in the United States to help her homeland.
In one last irony, she realizes that her freedoms and successes have come from failures.