My Father's Secret War: A Memoir

by Lucinda Franks

Book Overview

A moving and compelling memoir in which Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lucinda Franks discovers that the remote, almost impassive man she grew up with had in fact been a daring spy behind enemy lines... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 140130933X
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Miramax
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Story

I was lucky enough to hear Lucinda Franks speak on a recent book tour in Lowell, Mass, and was immediately drawn to her story. In reading the book, I recalled Milton's line, "They also serve who only stand and wait." The war in which her father served so heroically never really ended for him. It took a psychic toll on Tom Franks that was later to affect Lucinda and his entire family. They all paid the price for his service to his country. For many years, his paranoid behavior, the guns hidden all around the house, and his secretiveness was a mystery to the author. With the skill of a world class reporter who risked her own life in Northern Ireland in the worst days of "The Troubles," Lucinda Franks begins to unravel her father's story. With war records from The National Archives spread all over the floor before her, she pieces the facts together. Gradually, her father gives up the details of his secret war. His presence at the liberation of the first concentration camp at Ordruf is detailed, a scene of such horror that it alone would explain the nightmares that wracked her father and that woke her as a young girl to his voice in the next room shouting "No! No!" Later, he gives up his darkest secret to her,one that has haunted him since 1945. The fact that he did his duty was never enough to console him, and he lived with the burden of guilt. A friend of my father's died recently, and it was not until I read his obituary that I discovered he had been at Iwo Jima. So many of these veterans carried their wars to their graves, especially those who served the OSS. Lucinda Franks has done those veterans, and all of us, a service by rescuing her father's story, and by illustrating in beautiful prose the cost of war to all of us.

Outstanding Memoir

My father rarely talked about his experience in World War II and I never really asked him about it. Now that he's gone, I wish I had. Lucinda Franks asked her father, and he often demurred; but she persevered and was able to piece together a revealing story about the real horrors of war and the effect it has on its participants. Franks is an insightful observer and a talented writer: I was caught up in her quest to understand her father as he slipped away into old age. This is a very personal look at family dynamics in "The Greatest Generation." I found it captivating.

Understanding "The Greatest Generation"

As I approach the the age of my parents when they died, I've realized I know very little about them. I accepted them, as children do, as always having been the way they were when I was growing up. I think it is in this spirit of questioning that Lucinda Franks Morgenthau wrote this memoir. It is often the things that are never spoken of that influence lives: death, war, affairs that turned out badly. To accept and forgive, you have to understand, and for us children of the 1960s with parents who lived through WW II, that is investigative work. Ms. Franks is no longer a journalist of hard news, but she has done the hard work of investigating her father's war work, and her own heart. Bravo!

My Father's Secret War: A Memoir

I found this book to be very well-written, powerful and thought provoking. I can't even imagine what I would have done or felt in the authors situation. Reading this book made me re-evaluate some of my thoghts, feeling and actions as my mother was dying of cancer. The historical aspect of this book alone makes it worth reading, but if you are dealing or have dealt with someone afflicted with cancer or alzhiemers, this book can make you both laugh and cry.

My father the spy

There are stories galore about "unavailable" fathers and the anguish they have caused their adoring daughters. But rarely have the fathers had such a back story of intrigue and deception as that recounted by Lucinda Franks in this memoir. Franks' determination to tease that story out is a tribute to her perseverance and her investigative skills. In the process, she comes to terms with her largely absent father, and gives us extraordinary insight into the life of an extraordinary man.