All of us, unless we tragically die first, eventually lose a parent. Yet, this near-universal experience can devastate surviving family members, as demonstrated by one Milwaukee native’s new book, which has thus far received favorable reviews.
“A Real Emotional Girl: A Memoir of Love and Loss”is the first book by Tanya Chernov, a former Wisconsinite now living in Seattle. She has written an intensely personal account of her father’s ultimately unsuccessful struggle against cancer and her struggle, along with the rest of her family, to overcome grief.
Tanya had a father hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of girls wished they could have had. Richard Chernov graduated from Whitefish Bay High School and Marquette University’s law school. He and his wife Barbara (nee Cohen) had two sons, Dylan and Gabriel, before Tanya was born in 1981.
Although he began his career teaching in Milwaukee Public Schools and then joined his father’s law firm, he decided that he would be happiest in the outdoors helping young people develop their potential.
In 1986, he bought Birch Trail Camp for Girls on Pokegama Lake near Minong, in northwest Wisconsin. According to the camp’s website, girls come from all over the country and stay for four or eight weeks.
When Tanya was 14, the family moved from Milwaukee to Tucson, Ariz., but they returned to Wisconsin every summer for camp season.
A family business
Dick and Barbara directed the camp together, and all three of the children had major responsibilities in its operations. Dick devoted himself to helping young girls develop character, courage, creativity, self-esteem, and a good work ethic, and by every account the campers, who returned year after year, adored him.
The Chernov children grew up kayaking, skiing, traveling, and taking wilderness adventure courses. Dick didn’t believe in letting campers off the hook, either.
Challenging activities include rock climbing, horseback riding overnights, kayaking trips on Lake Superior, extended canoe expeditions in the Boundary Waters, six-day backpacking adventures in Isle Royale National Park, and minimal impact solo camping.
According to his daughter, Chernov always found time to laugh and enjoy life, and under his direction, girls had fun and felt good about themselves.
It was devastating for Tanya, the only girl who had Dick Chernov for her real father, when she was 17 and doctors discovered his cancer. Tanya graduated from high school, went on a wilderness adventure in Alaska, and began studies at the University of Puget Sound, believing, then hoping, then praying that he was cured.
For four years, he was in and out of hospitals and alternative healing programs for surgery, chemotherapy, and every imaginable treatment. On Dec. 16, 2001, he died at age 56. (His obituary appeared in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle later that month.)
At his request, his body was cremated and his ashes sprinkled over his favorite spot at Pokegama Lake. Birch Trail campers and their families from all over the country showered the Chernov family with condolences and testimonials to how profoundly he had affected them.
The first half of Tanya’s 46-chapter memoir deals with her father’s illness and death, and the second half with her own journey through grief and pain. She divides her book in the middle with several pages of color photographs of the family over a span of 22 years, especially of Tanya and her father together.
Through some astonishingly candid and intimate details, Tanya reveals the profound agony she experienced and the various ways she tried to cope with her sorrow, in society or in solitude, from throwing herself into her studies at UPS to self-destructive behaviors to Jewish prayer to travel abroad, alone and with other members of her family. As for what ultimately helped her and what did not, readers may find out for themselves.
Tanya’s book speaks not only to Milwaukeeans and the wider Birch Trail universe, but also to anyone who has suffered the loss of a parent or expects to in the future, or who works with families in crisis.
As someone who lost a 56-year-old husband in 2001, which left three young children, and having lost my own father last month, I found Tanya’s memoir particularly poignant.
I appreciated the fact that Tanya avoided mention of the World Trade Center tragedy a few months earlier in that year, evoking readers’ sympathy without it. One can tell she studied creative writing and enjoys her craft.
She often employs various poetic devices, such as similes and metaphors. Despite her occasional references to Ernest Hemingway and visions of following in his footsteps, she manages to maintain a unique style of her own and not imitate Hemingway by any means.
Milwaukeean Susan Ellman, MLIS, has taught history and English composition at the high school level and is a freelance writer at work on a historical novel.
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