The Housekeeper’s Secret

A Memoir by Sandra Schnakenburg

The Housekeeper’s Secret is a memoir about a journey of uncovering the secrets we keep in our family and about the stories we believe are true. A captivating story of love, loss, ancestral influence, mental illness, and two family’s who come together as one. After putting together the missing pieces, a whole new story emerged about someone I thought I knew so well.

Lee’s life story and what came with it was the reckoning truth of my own family.

My personal fascination with memoir stems from our housekeeper, Lee’s dying wish to write her story but it was a story I did not know. When I told her I would write it, “someday when the time was right” a sense of relief came over her. She would leave this world knowing that her story would be told someday. After Lee passed I was left with a monumental responsibility; how to tell Lee’s life story when I didn’t know anything about it. The story unfolded as if it were preordained destiny meant to be fulfilled. But what came with the unfolding of the truth was shock, pain, and reconciliation.