Review: 'The Family Outing,' by Jessi Hempel

It wasn't planned this way, but a recent reading of Casey Parks' "Diary of a Misfit" dovetailed nicely with Jessi Hempel's equally compelling new book, "The Family Outing." Confrontations with sexuality within less-than-functional families is the main theme of both memoirs: "Misfit" deals with Parks coming out to her religious family in Louisiana, while "Outing," also with overtones of religion, delves into a whole family grappling with sexual identity.

Both dig deep into the dysfunction but rely on a mystery to propel the narrative. For Hempel, podcaster and senior editor at large at LinkedIn, it's her mother's brush with the Ypsilanti Slayer, a serial killer who terrorized the Michigan city in the 1960s, an experience kept secret until Hempel began interviewing her family during the pandemic.

The idea behind the interviews, what Hempel came to call the Project, was to piece together a truth that would explain what happened to her parents, siblings and herself, how they came to their secrets, how those secrets were revealed and how this all brought them back together as a family, but a "different kind of family, reflecting a new set of values."

Hempel writes about each family member in turn, beginning with her mother. She never shies away from total honesty about growing up gay with a bisexual sister, transgender brother and a closeted father. There is pain, for sure — "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," after all — but also moments of levity and compassion. Hempel would argue there aren't any truly happy families, that we all have our closets. I wonder what Leo Tolstoy would have had to say about that.

Maren Longbella is a Star Tribune copy editor.

The Family Outing

By: Jessi Hempel.

Publisher: HarperOne, 320 pages, $27.99.