John Sedgwick Reading at Emmanuel Church

John Sedgwick will be reading at Emmanuel Church Tuesday, January 9th, at 6:30 pm. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door and can be purchased via the Massachusetts Historical Society website or by calling 617-646-0560.

It's hard for a Sedgwick to shake off the family name. Any Sedgwick would feel the pressure of the family history even if it weren't for the legendary Edie Sedgwick, who blazed her way to fame thanks to Andy Warhol.

The blueblooded Sedgwick past has left a powerful mark on all its descendants, particularly author John Sedgwick, who is tracing the source of his own depression to his family in the book In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family.

In his interview with NPR's Weekend Edition, Sedgwick said, "My life did not begin with me." Relying on his own knowledge and the Massachusetts Historical Society archives, he starts his book with Massachusetts senator Theodore Sedgwick, a friend of George Washington's and a former Speaker of the House and threads the family's alternating brilliance and madness to the present day.

Theodore Sedgwick's pull is so strong that it is reflected in the "Sedgwick Pie," the family's gravesite in Stockbridge. Per the layout of the pie, the graves of the generations are arranged in a mini-universe with Theodore Sedgwick and his wife at the center.

These stories show that the Sedgwicks are as powerful and - occasionally - as doomed as the other famed Massachusetts family, the Kennedys, and this reading promises to be an excellent portrait, not just of madness, but of one of the major American families.

Image of Sedgwick's book from Amazon.