To Linger With You
A Memoir of Sunshine and Longing
Donna Nebenzahl
About
Donna Nebenzahl grew up in the 1950s, part of a close-knit Portuguese family in the South American colony of British Guiana. Nurtured by loving grandparents, she spent her childhood never asking why her mother lived a continent away or the reason for her father's early death. Nor did she know why, having been brought up Catholic, she had a Jewish last name. As the colony gained independence and she moved to Canada, Nebenzahl began to explore the difficult issues that her family history raised. The answers emerge gradually in this luminous, compelling memoir that explores the aftermath of loss and the true meaning of home.
Praise for To Linger With You
“In Donna Nebenzahl’s To Linger with You, a quest to fill a psychic void morphs into a rich family history replete with secrets and surprises. Nebenzahl’s sensuous appreciation of her tropical home in British Guiana is bulwarked by careful research and a clear eyed reckoning with the legacies of slavery and indentured servitude. To Linger with You speaks of, and to, the parts of our personal heritage that don’t seem to add up — and then suddenly do. This fascinating and carefully observed memoir deserves a wide readership.”
— Elaine Kalman Naves, author of Shoshanna’s Story and Journey to Vaja
“Donna Nebenzahl enjoyed an idyllic childhood in British Guiana, or so she thought. Her maternal grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles had enveloped her in love. All she lacked were parents. Her eventual need for the truth about the past led her to ask a few hard questions: Why did her father die young? Why did her mother abandon her? And just who were her father’s parents? Nebenzahl’s discovery of the answers turns this beautiful memoir from a nostalgic evocation of Caribbean privilege into something richer, deeper and more troubling.”
— Mark Abley, author of The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind
“This is a gorgeous gift of a memoir. Donna Nebenzahl is one gifted and righteous keeper of her family stories, which are remembered and recounted here in cinematic detail. From her childhood in the home of her well-to-do grandparents, who came to what was then British Guiana from Portugal, to her life as an emigrant to Canada, Ms. Nebenzahl’s family story is redolent with love and loss. To Linger With You can be read as a high praise song to one family and the Edenic landscape of the author’s childhood home; but it is also a testament to the strength and resilience of immigrants, and a welcome and clear-eyed commentary on the many cultural influences that shaped the modern Caribbean.”
— Lorna Goodison, prize-winning author of From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island
Donna Nebenzahl
Donna Nebenzahl left British Guiana — now known as Guyana — at the age of 10 and grew up in Montreal. She studied at McGill University and has been a reporter and editor at several major Canadian dailies as well as a freelance magazine writer. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Concordia University, and the author of Womankind: Faces of Change Around the World. She conceived and wrote a documentary film about Elsie Reford, Twice Upon a Garden, as well as the environmental blog Earthbound. She and her husband live in Montreal and Big Tancook Island, Nova Scotia.
Purchase
To Linger With You is available for pre-order through your local bookstore, Indigo, and Amazon.
Details
Published by Stonehewer Books, September 2025
248 Pages • Paperback • 5.5” x 8.5”