The author Margaret Atwood was "stunned" after finding out that Nobel laureate Alice Munro's second husband had sexually assaulted his stepdaughter, writes NY Times.
The daughter, Andrea Skinner, told her own story in an essay published in the Toronto Star on Sunday, and whose details were unknown to her colleague Atwood until now.
When Skinner was 25 years old, she told her mother about the assaults, but her mother chose to stay with the perpetrator until his death.
"Why did she stay? No idea" writes Atwood in an email to NY Times. "I think they were from a generation and a place where you swept things under the rug."
Changed plans
After her husband's death in 2013, Alice Munro changed her plans to be buried next to him.
In 2005, Andrea Skinner finally filed a police report, and her stepfather, then 80 years old, was convicted of sexual assault of his stepdaughter when she was a child. However, it was not reported in the media. In the essay, Skinner suggests that people outside the family were aware of what had happened.
"Influential people knew part of my story but continued to support and contribute to a narrative they knew was false", writes Skinner, whose revelation has now received significant attention.
Remains unclear
But how well-known the story was in literary Canada remains unclear, writes NY Times. Margaret Atwood did find out a little about the reasons for the rift in the Munro family a few years ago, and then from another of Munro's daughters. Atwood, however, did not know the whole story.
Nor did Martin Levin, former literary editor at the Canadian The Globe and Mail. During his 20 years at the newspaper, he never heard a whisper about this.
Alice (Munro) was always sacred in some way, he says.
