Noshing With Phyllis Karas, Author, Curse of the Blumenthals
This week on “Ira’s Everything Bagel,” Ira sits down with New York Times bestselling author Phyllis Karas to explore the powerful and deeply personal story behind her book, Curse of the Blumenthals.
Wearing the title “cousin” as a badge of honor, Phyllis shares why she felt compelled—after years of waiting—to finally confront her family’s past. What began as a personal journey evolved into a four-year investigation involving genealogists, librarians, family letters, and long-buried photographs.
At the heart of the story are two defining events—an accident and a murder—that cast a long shadow over generations of the Blumenthal family. Phyllis discusses the emotional weight of revisiting painful memories, including visiting a cousin in prison as a child, and the difficult choices she faced in deciding what to include in the book.
Blending her journalistic instincts with intimate family knowledge, Phyllis peels back layers of secrecy to reveal how trauma shaped the lives of fifteen cousins—and how understanding the past may offer a path toward healing.
This is a conversation about truth, legacy, and the courage it takes to face “the elephant in the room”—because every family has a story… and some stories demand to be told.<b>
ABOUT PHYLLIS:
Phyllis Karas is a professor of journalism at Boston University, a stringer for People Magazine, and the author of ten books. Brutal was a NYT bestseller; The Onassis Woman was the subject of a “Dateline NBC Special.” Her work has appeared in Vogue, Miami Herald, Boston Magazine and Moment Magazine, where her story on Kosher Slaughter received the Simon Rockower Award for Excellence. She has been interviewed on “Extra,” “Hollywood Access” and “Hard Ball.”