NEW YORK -- My friend Lenore Parker threw a party for Mary M. Leder, who has just published her first book, at age 86. The book is an autobiography, "My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back" (Indiana University Press).
Lenore, who once headed the American Council for Emigres in the Professions and had Mary Mackler (as Leder is known among her friends) on her staff, was "on call" for editorial advice while Mackler was writing the book.
On the face of it, or rather as the publisher would have it, Mackler's is a story of an American woman's life horribly twisted and maligned by fate -- specifically by Stalinist Russia.