My Father's Secret War: A Memoir
Written by Lucinda Franks
Narrated by Joyce Bean
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
Lucinda Franks
Lucinda Franks is the author of the memoirs My Father's Secret War and Timeless: Love, Morganthau, and Me. A former staff writer for The New York Times, she has also written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the life and death of Diana Oughton, a member of the Weathermen. A graduate of Vassar College, Franks lives in New York City. Her husband, the former longtime district attorney for New York County Robert M. Morgenthau, died in 2019.
Related to My Father's Secret War
Related audiobooks
Cloistered: My Years as a Nun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mighty Franks: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queen Of The West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLouis D. Brandeis: A Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stanford White and Madison Square Garden: The Shocking History of New York City’s Most Notorious Architect and Most Famous Arena Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlaying the Pools Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Forgetting Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Jack Kerouac's On the Road Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Lennon's Sister Julia Baird In Conversation: The Chester Tapes 1983-1984 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Subversive: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5FIVE TIMES LUCKY Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Glass Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vienna: Years Ago Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Negotiator: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoldwyn: A Biography Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Brookland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Accidental Suffragist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Opium Queen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlexander's Bridge (version 3) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sometimes You Have to Cross When It Says Don't Walk: A Memoir of Breaking Barriers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crying Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRadio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Son and Heir: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCity of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Women's Biographies For You
Down the Drain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Own It All: How to Stop Waiting for Change and Start Creating It. Because Your Life Belongs to You. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hello, Molly!: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to My Rage: An Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Dream House: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stash: My Life in Hiding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncultured: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Class: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Mother Was Nuts: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell Me Everything: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Witch of Eye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We're Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Women We Buried, Women We Burned: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for My Father's Secret War
60 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I found this "brillian and haunting memoir" a huge disappointment. Started off sucking me in as I was interested in the story and the author (a Pulitzer Prize winner) but did not like the way she told the story. Found it a bit self-serving and egocentric. Who cares if she and her father found love after all those years? I wanted a real spy story and it was not that at all.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Interesting. I learned a few things about World War II.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I really liked the "meaty" part of the story, about this guy's training and secret activities in WWII, but this darn book is written in a diary-like, free form, way and that was just terrible. So much extraneous chit chat between the good pieces: how her kid like animals, what they're eating for breakfast, about the guy's favorite comfy chair... gah!!!!! just skip the extra chit chat about the kids and the car and the pets and where he slept! I'm only about 1/2 way thru and I don't know if I can make it for the rest of the story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"Bullets and butterflies, such a bizarre combination of hobbies. I let the lead slugs sift through my hand."This was an amazing book. It's as much about the strained relationship between father and daughter as it is about his "secret war," and it's incredibly moving. Tom Franks was a huge hero of WWII, but he's nobody you've ever heard of, in fact his name is practically wiped out of the records. Practically everything he did he was sworn to secrecy about, and those things, plus keeping them locked up tight, ate him alive for the rest of his life, destroying his relationships with everyone around him. Late in his life, his daughter (who has had a deeply rocky relationship with him since she hit her teens) is cleaning up his home, going through boxes to dispose of unneeded junk taking up needed space, when she discovers some shocking items from the war; this prompts her to begin a personal crusade to find out just who was this man who was her father, and just what part did he play in the war. The book is essentially the record of these years of her struggle with the search and her struggle with family relationships."Now, when there's finally nothing left, the silence is at least enough."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One woman's journalistic endeavors to uncover her father's secret contribution to WWII. Light, easy read with bits of history and dysfunction - truly echoes the phrase secrets will make you sick!!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In war men do despicable things and it changes them forever. Lucinda Franks' book about her father is at time moving, at times frustrating, and always interesting. It is the story of a woman coming to grips with the father she has really never known because he is secretive, quiet and alcoholic. They have had a difficult relationship all her life, and toward the end of his, she tries to find out who he is and how he became that person. Through several years of searching and questioning, she gets the answers to her questions, but she has to live with her decision to dig so deeply into her father's past. There were parts of the book that hit close to home, and I had an understanding of what and why she was doing what she did, but in the end, I don't think the book lived up to my expectations of the work of a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Still, it is a quick enjoyable read, and helps tell the story of a generation of soldiers who went to war, made promises and kept them--long after the need for their vow of silence was over. It is the story of many families who have had a loved one come home from war a different person. It is as true for soldiers who returned from Vietnam, Iraq, Korea or Afghanistan as it is those who returned from the horrors of WWII.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Her father was cold and remote; gradually she finds out about what he did during WWII - he was with the battalion that first opened a concentration camp, worked undercover doing various things. It doesn't change their relationship, ultimately, but she gets some peace by finding out what had influenced him.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5We read this book in our book group, and it got uneven responses. I thought the conclusion was cathartic and resolved a number of the threads that had developed throughout the memoir. Because of the effectiveness of the conclusion, I found the book as a whole satisfying and complete.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting look into the mind and strength of character of a man who kept so many secrets from his family because he believed he was protecting them, and because he was told not to divulge certain information. It brought home to me, how we sometimes think we know a person, but we really just know as much as they want us to know, and only a side of them that they're willing to include us in. How sad must it have been for Cindy's father to be constantly pushed away by her in her misguided belief that her father didn't care about the family, because of the secrets he was compelled to keep.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In the end, not a great book by a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Times. Seemed like she went overboard trying to make her father's secret life during the war more important than it was.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A daughter's discover that there was much more to her father than she had originally thought. She gradually lets go of old, petty resentments and begins to learn more about the father that she had really never known, A WWII spy who witnessed and survived many atrocities and harrowing events.