Godwin’s latest book unpacks his past

SALISBURY — Peter Godwin described writing his memoir, “Exit Wounds: A Story of Love,” as a “literary Heimlich maneuver” at a book talk at Scoville Memorial Library Sunday, Oct. 26.

Speaking with New York Times travel editor Amy Virshup, Godwin said he wrote the book during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said he was having trouble with another project and started writing the memoir instead.

It was a difficult time, he continued. His mother was ill and in the last year of her life and his marriage of 25 years was ending.

As he approached the age of 60, he found himself wondering who he was and where he belonged.

Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe when it was still Rhodesia. His mother was a doctor and his father was a “quintessential” Englishman abroad in the last days of the British empire.

It wasn’t until his father was old and sick that he told Godwin the truth. His father was a Polish Jew from Warsaw, whose parents had sent him to England on a language immersion trip just before the start of World War II.

“He couldn’t get back, they couldn’t get out.”

He never saw them again.

Godwin’s mother came from a “posh” family in England, and when she married his father, she was disinherited and shunned.

“That’s why they wound up in Africa.”

Even though the family lived in a remote part of Rhoidesia, and his companions growing up were African children, the family remained “culturally English.”

So when he went to England for school, “it was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.”

“I finally got there and there were these small houses and angry faces.”

Virshup asked about his experience in Salisbury, where he and his then-wife bought a house that once belonged to bandleader Artie Shaw.

Godwin described the house as “a squat, ugly little house wedged into a hill.”

He was out of the country at the time of the sale, so he didn’t have much input.

He was happy to discover that however uninspiring the outside was, the interior offered a 270-degree view of the valley below.

And there was the Artie Shaw connection.

Godwin said he learned that Shaw owned the house when he was married to Evelyn Keyes, an actress. (Shaw was married eight times.)

He said Shaw had a much fancier house not far away in New York state and was “on the run from the IRS.”

So Shaw used the Connecticut home as a “hideout.”

Godwin said he was away from the Northwest Corner for five years, and when he was driving back he started getting nervous.

“I realized what I’m used to is from my African background, going back to places to find them degraded.

“I realized how little continuity I’ve had in my life.”