My Father's Secret War: A Memoir
by Lucinda Franks
List Price:
Our Price: $3.00
You Save: $21.95 (88%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Lucinda FranksEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-14
ISBN: 140135226X
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Miramax
Book Reviews of My Father's Secret War: A Memoir
Book Review: 2 books in one: great reporting and a searing memoir with a powerful conclusion
Summary: 5 Stars
The greatest thing about The Greatest Generation is how little they burdened their kids. They fought demonic Nazis and maniacal Japanese, and after they won the war, they came home and picked up their lives where they left off. And if they didn't talk about what they'd done between 1942 and 1945, all the better --- who really wants to hear war stories?
The underside of myth is nightmare. Yes, many World War II vets sucked it up and maintained radio silence to the end of their days. But not without paying a high price --- what we now call "post-traumatic stress." If you are the child of a vet, you may have seen these symptoms: damaged relationships, alcoholism, chain-smoking, suicide and other forms of early death.
Silence turns out not to be such a virtue after all.
Lucinda Franks was the youngest journalist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. But for most of her life, she had very little interest in finding out why her father was so remote: "The Man Who Wasn't There." With good reason --- Tom Franks was a world-class jerk.
When she was just 7, Lucinda learned --- from her miserable mother --- that her father had a girlfriend. Late at night, she heard the sounds of Daddy slapping Mommy. And in her bedroom, her father thoughtfully stored a gun under her mattress. When Lucinda was in college, he proposed that she meet his lover. Later, when she was covered in glory at The New York Times, he retreated.
"My Father's Secret War" begins with an eviction notice. Lucinda's mother is long dead, Tom's world has shrunk to cigarettes and coffee and gun magazines, and now he's about to lose his home. Lucinda drives up to make some sense of the chaos --- and, in a carton, finds World War II maps and an Iron Cross, symbol of the Nazi party.
And with that, the book takes off --- Lucinda will turn her reportoring skills on her father, racing to learn who he really was before he topples into dementia and dies.
Many of us had difficult fathers, some as remote as Tom Franks. I did, and it never occurred to me to mount a multi-year probe of his past. A few facts suffice; the conclusion is obvious; move on.
But Lucinda Franks --- she's a pit bull. She strips away layer after layer of her father's defenses. The process runs the gamut. She can be sweet and seductive. And she can be bare-knuckles brutal, reducing her father to blubbering.
You know how the story ends: no reconciliation, no book. It's the road traveled that is so compelling. If you like war stories, here's a twisted one: a veteran who takes wartime secrecy so literally he can't open up, even after half a century. And if you like family dramas, here's a story of a father's love masked as indifference and a daughter's need for a father so desperate it drives her to her own kind of brutality.
In the end, we are re-introduced to Tom and Lucinda Franks. In this telling, he's a hero --- a real one. And although she never says it, isn't she a heroine for penetrating his armor and learning his story?
There are two books here. For most of us, this book will be a first-rate psychological detective story that's perhaps a bit too richly reported. But for adult children seeking reconciliation with their aging fathers, it's more like a gift --- an ice breaker, a way to start a conversation that might bring revelation and closure before the old man shuffles off. For those readers, "My Father's Secret War" will be less like a book and more like a public service.
Three cheers for both books.
Summary of My Father's Secret War: A Memoir
In this moving and compelling memoir about parent and child, father and daughter, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lucinda Franks discovers that the remote, nearly impassive man she grew up with had in fact been a daring spy behind enemy lines in World War II. Sworn to secrecy, he began revealing details of his wartime activities only in the last years of his life as he became afflicted with Alzheimer?s. His exploits revealed a man of remarkable bravado -- posing as a Nazi guard, slipping behind enemy lines to blow up ammunition dumps, and being flown to one of the first concentration camps liberated by the Allies to report on the atrocities found there.My Father?s Secret War is an intimate account of Franks coming to know her own father after years of estrangement. Looking back at letters he had written her mother in the early days of WWII, Franks glimpses a loving man full of warmth. But after the grimmest assignments of the war his tone shifts, settling into an all-too-familiar distance. Franks learns about him -- beyond the alcoholism and adultery -- and comes to know the man he once was.
Her story is haunting, and beautifully told, even as the tragedy becomes clear: Franks finally comes to know her father, but only as he is slipping further into his illness. Lucinda Franks understands her father as the disease claims him. My Father?s Secret War is a triumph of love over secrets, and a tribute to the power of the connection of family.
Memoirs Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Memoirs Books
Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Centuryby Hunter S. Thompson
Penguin Books, Limited (UK); Published: 2008-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.11
Price in other shops:
Never Have Your Dog Stuffedby Alan Alda
Arrow Books; Published: 2007-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.59
Price in other shops:
The Hunger: A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambitionby John DeLucie, Graydon Carter
Ecco; Published: 2009-05-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.77
Price in other shops:
Brotherhood of Warriors: Behind Enemy Lines with a Commando in One of the World's Most Elite Counterterrorism Unitsby Aaron Cohen, Douglas Century
Ecco; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.80
Price in other shops:
Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survivalby Carmina Salcido, Steve Jackson
William Morrow; Published: 2009-10-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Unlocked: The Life and Crimes of a Mafia Insiderby Louis Ferrante
Harper Perennial; Published: 2009-02-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
Price in other shops:
Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacherby William Zinsser
Harper; Published: 2009-05-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.08
Price in other shops:
Got the Life: My Journey of Addiction, Faith, Recovery, and Kornby Fieldy
William Morrow; Published: 2009-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.10
Price in other shops:
The Ride of My Lifeby Mat Hoffman
It Books; Published: 2003-09-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.95
Similar Books and other products
Immigrant Kidsby Russell Freedman
Puffin; Published: 1995-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.39
Price in other shops:
Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughtersby Barack Obama
Knopf Books for Young Readers; Knopf Books for Young Readers; Published: 2010-11-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.94
Price in other shops:
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differenceby Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay Books; Published: 2002-01-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.75
Price in other shops:
Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassinby Roland W. Haas
Potomac Books Inc.; Published: 2007-07-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War IIby Steven Karras
Zenith Press; Published: 2009-10-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.64
Price in other shops:
My Father's Secret Warby Lucinda Franks
Miramax; Published: 2008-03-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops: