It's quite a mix we've cooked up now around the confessional couch.

Turn on the TV and you can hear Mackenzie Phillips tell Larry King of her decade-long affair with her famous musician father (as she kicks off a book tour).

Or listen to talk show host David Letterman detailing his affairs with staffers, as the audience laughs nervously and Letterman seems unsure whether to admonish them or not.

There are many reasons for celebrities to confess secrets: damage control (Letterman), commerce and public therapy (Phillips), or visibility and profile maintenance (take your pick from the magazine rack).

'Um, something I've been meaning to tell you.' David Letterman on The Late Show, revealing his infidelities in October 2009. (CBS/Associated Press)

But ordinary people have plenty of family secrets, too, which they often keep quiet. Even if that eats them up inside and distorts their most intimate relationships.

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret is Steve Luxenberg's story of uncovering his own family's hidden history.

He uncovers no crime, no incest, no sexual impropriety. Rather, he tells the story of his mother who hid the fact she had a sister who had been locked away for years in a mental institution.

No-go areas

There are likely no-go areas in all families. But Steve's mother, Beth, almost seemed to define herself by her secret.

She grew up in Detroit in an immigrant family and, as an adult, every time she met a new acquaintance, she'd find a way to mention that she was an only child, even in casual conversation.

It was as if being an only child was a badge, an emblem of a distinct personality.

Think about it and you will probably find that all our relatives have such ticks. We accept them as part of their character.

But for Beth, other emotions were always bubbling beneath the surface: guilt, regret, confusion perhaps.

Like many people, Beth Luxenberg was good at projecting the personality she wanted others to see.

She lived with her family secret until she mentioned it one time to a doctor when she was nearly 80, infirm and dying of emphysema.

Not an only child

With that utterance, she was no longer an only child. Long ago, she admitted, a disabled sister was sent away at the age of two.

When Steve heard about his mother's confession from his brother in 1995, he was startled.

But he and his siblings never brought it up with their mother, even though they were certainly curious.

Why burden a sick woman with such a question? It would have been cruel to question a dying woman about something she had clearly guarded all her life.

Perhaps most of us would have let this go, buried our questions along with the coffin.

Maybe, if we were discreet, we'd ask a few relatives. But Luxenberg is a reporter, a senior editor at the Washington Post with years of investigative experience.

So, he brought his curiosity and his restlessness and his talents to bear on his own family history.

The result is a scrupulous, detailed account of one dogged reporter tracking down a family secret. Call it a personal Watergate investigation.

Annie

After Beth's death in 1999, a name became attached to the secret: Annie.

And Annie, it turned out, was no little girl when she was sent away to a state hospital. She was a young woman of 21. Beth, at the time, was 23, not a young child.

Annie suffered from physical and mental disabilities.

Her crippled right leg had to be amputated. Her IQ was on the very low end of the spectrum.

Before she was hospitalized, she suffered a psychotic break: she was paranoid and behaving erratically.

She was sent away and Beth never saw her again, though their mother visited.

Like so many Americans (and Canadians) in the 1940s and '50s, Annie was swallowed up in a mental health system that housed — or warehoused, if you like — a variety of patients, from the psychotic to the enfeebled.

Little could be done with many of these poor souls. Few therapies existed and the medications at the time were only marginally effective.

They were sometimes subjected to experimental and callous procedures like lobotomies.

Treatment was cursory. Many were abused or, like Annie, it turned out, sexually assaulted in hospital.

Society's bargain

Today, with deinstitutionalization the norm, the mentally ill roam our streets and we may choose to avoid or step over a person who might be a contemporary version of Steve's aunt.

But back then, only a few decades ago, the mentally ill existed as a vast, largely invisible population, hidden from view.

That was society's bargain. But the result was that Beth Luxenberg lodged her family secret inside of herself while her sister, Annie, was placed out of sight and mind, far enough away in a hospital.

When you go looking for family secrets, however, others often appear, which is what happened to our steadfast reporter.

He combed through archives and records and discovered that his father also suffered from a breakdown while he was in the army (more psychiatric distress in one family).

Luxenberg then travelled to Europe where he discovered stories from his family tree about the consequences of war, displacement and the Holocaust.

He discovered that his family, like many, bears witness to history's savage moments.

Daughter, sister, aunt

If you think that Beth might have wanted to unburden herself and tell someone her secret, you are right. She did indeed try.

She told one dear friend who remained angry at her for years, for not trusting her with the truth from early on.

No wonder people hide family secrets: Who knows how others will react? You say, one day I'll tell somebody. And then you never get around to it.

At the end of the book, Steve Luxenberg goes to the grave site of his Aunt Annie. The tombstone reads: Annie Cohen April 27, 1919-August 7, 1972. Daughter, Sister, Aunt.

That was all that was left of her legacy, her life. Steve had discovered his aunt could read and converse with people. She had a life and was a social being with a network that survived even in an institution.

He wonders what kind of life she might have led today with the right support.

But now, looking at her headstone, he has only this block of stone and a few chiselled words.

When you close the book, you can't help wondering what secrets your own family hides, buried in family gravesites or the inner recesses of an aging mind.