One summer, on the cusp of middle age, Ann Kimmage traveled to Europe with her husband and two sons. On arrival in Prague, she switched immediately and naturally to Czech. Her sons gazed at her in astonishment. Clearly she had been there before. Could she explain? Thus did this American professor of literature, living quietly in upstate New York, begin a decadelong reckoning with the past, which culminated in a memoir of unusual wisdom and force.

Kimmage is hardly the first reddiaper baby to author a book, but her Un- American Childhood (University of Georgia Press, 260 pages, $ 29.95) is a model of the genre. It is balanced, objective, historically aware. It also tells an amazing, novelistic tale. The bookstores are bulging with reminiscences of youthful hardship — of alcoholic parents, uncommunicative parents, domineering parents, parents who failed to attend enough ball games or clarinet recitals. What of Communist parents who wrenched their children from their home and took them on a thirteen-year exile, subordinating every facet of their lives to totalitarian politics?