Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir. . . of Sorts

Written by Ian Morgan Cron

Narrated by Ian Morgan Cron

A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction, and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive.

"This is a record of my life as I remember it—but more importantly, as I felt it."

At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggle with alcoholism, upended the world of a teenager struggling to become a man.

Born into a family of privilege and power, Ian's life is populated with colorful people and stories as his father takes the family on a wild roller-coaster ride through wealth and poverty and back again.

Decades later, as he faced his own personal demons, Ian realized that the only way to find peace was to voyage back through a painful childhood marked by extremes—privilege and poverty, violence and tenderness, truth and deceit—that he’d spent years trying to escape.

• A fast-paced, unique memoir about the power of forgiveness from the bestselling author of The Road Back to You
• Details his father’s struggle with alcohol and Cron’s own journey from addiction to twenty-three years of sobriety
• Encouragement to see God’s redemptive power through life’s struggles

In this surprisingly funny and forgiving memoir, Ian reminds us that no matter how different the pieces may be, in the end we are all cut from the same cloth, stitched by faith into an exquisite quilt of grace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781400339976

Ian Morgan Cron

Ian Morgan Cron is a renowned teacher of the Enneagram, the bestselling author of The Road Back to You and The Story of You, an Episcopal priest, and a trained psychotherapist. Cron hosts the popular podcast Typology and is a highly sought after speaker for conferences. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Anne.

Reviews for Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me

[gaillamontagne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous story of God's Grace. This is Ian Morgan Cron's heartbreaking personal memoir of living with an alcoholic, abusive, dismissive, narcissistic father, and Ian's long road to healing and recovery. This book is full of tragedy, drama and much humor. Also, he had a spiritual encounter in the early '70's that was similar to the experiences that I, and many of my friends had. I chose it at random from the library and found another jewel.

[markpsadler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Growing up in the Golden Age with a father that moved the family from Hollywood to England, who hung out with movie stars and the nations star politicians made young Ian, a thoughtful young boy, very curious. The family had good times and lean times, times when father was gone from the home. As he got older he realized his father was working for some clandestine branch of the government, a spy know less.
Unfortunately it was his father’s drinking that caused the family hard times, times when he was unemployable and young Ian often felt the wrath of his control-freak of a dad. It is the same for all boys that love yet abhor their father’s ways, they become shaped for better or worse by the experience and how they conduct their life from thereon is the same as or as diametrically opposite as they can from the example they had to live with, but no matter what no matter how hard you try a little always rubs off and scars you forever.
In Ian’s case it was the call to the ministry that saved him. God can be a harsh task master himself. Did he switch out one controlling father for another? Either way it is an interesting read, one of hope and inspiration a fractured memory and finally a mother’s love.

[hjvanderklis_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining coming of age by the now Episcopal priest Ian Morgan Cron. Cron is honest about his adult lens to do his personal retrospective. Of course it’s part fiction and ‘a memoir….of sorts’. His Roman Catholic upbringing, earliest memories of his alcoholic father who worked for the CIA as well, a nanny, schools and the challenge to establish friendships.Having said farewell to the faith of his childhood the return to God takes time and is full of criticism. Alcohol got a grip on the author as well. During a ‘rollercoaster ride’ with all kinds of strong emotional and personal developments in only 18 months time, a powerful rehabilitation takes place. Now, after 23 years of sobriety it was time to write this memoir. No, life’s journey isn’t ended yet, but as Cron saw, it can be over in a minute. Fed up with all kinds of cheesy conversion stories or Christians writing books full of Bible verses without personal application, Jesus, My Father, the CIA and me, is a fresh alternative.

[justindtapp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ian Morgan Cron is an Episcopalian adjunct priest and former youth worker with Young Life. This after growing up as the Roman Catholic son of an essentially absent and abusive alcoholic father, a scar from his secret CIA life.Cron wrote this memoir about his childhood years after his father's death, after he began a long healing process processing long-buried emotions and coming to terms with himself and God.This book made the Wall Street Journal's bestseller list. Who is the audience? I'd say teenagers, particularly guys, in Cron's youth group struggling with identity and people just curious about what it was like to have a real-life secret spy as your dad. You have to get through much of Cron's wisecracks and humor, he sounds like a corny youth pastor type to me. But the book is interesting and has elements that many men find interesting and worth contemplating.Cron didn't know his father was a CIA agent until late in his teenage years, after he discovered a picture of his dad playing golf with the President. He never learned many stories from his father, only occasional tidbits. His family always lived in upscale communities, going from wealth to poverty to well-off again while his father checked out mentally for seemingly years at a time. (It makes one wonder how old-school CIA agents were recruited and operated. It resembles the Matt Damon flick The Good Son a lot.)Cron is raised in Catholic schools and has many stories from it. As a teenager, he's invited to a Young Life club and eventually begins a deeper spiritual walk with God, culminating in his seeking professional counseling after his father dies and his mind frees itself from its silence. He goes on to become an Episcopalian minister and is now seeking his doctorate. I give this book 3 stars out of 5. It's well-written, entertaining, and has a message of hope and redemption. It is a little campy at times and makes me wonder "who is reading this book?" other than people like me who found the title intriguing and it was a cheap $1.99 deal on Amazon at the time. I would probably give it to a teenager or college student as an entertaining read that demonstrates the importance of vulnerability, family, and spirituality.

[polilla5lynn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was hard to put down even when I absolutely had to. It was with caution that I started reading, not knowing what to expect after having read someone’s introduction – but by the time I was into chapter two there was no stopping.Ian Cron writes with such seeming honesty and transparency that the reader can feel his grief, his triumphs, his struggles. I winced in places, feeling sorrow for his pain, and laughed out loud where he unexpectedly injected humour.He writes about his tumultuous growing up years – as he remembers it – with his secretive alcoholic father and his proper, lovely mother who tried to protect him. He writes about his own fall into a life of addiction, patterned unwittingly after his father. And he writes about his deep love for God, his anger toward Jesus when all he wants is for his own father to love him, and the discoveries of the truth about both his father and Jesus. Truths that change his life.What bothered me about this book was the author’s flippant attitude toward God, his apparent lack of reverence as if God owed him something. I’m not sure what Ian Morgan Cron was attempting to do, but knowing that he eventually became a priest caused me to feel alarm about the negative way he talked about the Bible and Jesus. My hope is that he was simply expressing the feelings he had early in his spiritual journey, which are probably the questions of many in their search for Truth.Having said that, this is a story that pulled me in and held me there right to the end; such an enjoyable read that is different from any out there.A Footnote to this Review: After I posted this review to my blog, the author left a comment which explained a lot and eased my mind. One thing he said is, "BTW I think what you heard as flippant was actually masked anger, disappointment expressed in sarcasm, which is what I did in those days."

[thelogo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"This is a memoir, but please understand that (to any writer with a good imagination) all memoirs are false... we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely, exactly, what happened, or what should have." John Irving. Cron opens up his memoir noting that it is a memoir, not an autobiography nor a history. It is the story of his life, told through memory tinted glasses, as only our own stories can be. As stories go, Cron lays out an engaging and thought provoking story. Growing up with an alcoholic father who also worked for the CIA, and all the attendant pains of both of those facts, Cron has much to tell. Here, then, is the story of his growing up. As a story, this book was excellent. Cron touches on, and explores, deep themes of forgiveness, love, reconciliation, and many others. Stylistically, this book was quite enjoyable. I even laughed out loud, making this the third author to ever accomplish that (Douglas Adams and Steven Erikson being the first two on this short and distinguished list). Some of his comparisons did get tiresome; by the time you finish meeting the cast of Cron's childhood you realize that they are all much larger than life. I suppose those are the lenses of childhood. Conclusion: 4.5 Stars. Recommended. This was a very good book and an worthwhile story. See my blog: thelogo.blogspot.com for more reviews and such.

[decemberjoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The title of this book is very interesting and caught my attention right away, making me want to pick up this book and read about Mr. Cron.This book or as he has subtitled “a memoir of sorts” is about Ian’s journey to healing. He grew up in a home where his father’s love of alcohol dominated his home life. Learning to deal with his father’s alcoholism created several cracks in Ian’s life which made him search for acceptance and attention from his father; he tried to be the rebel son as well as the good son. When neither of these tactics worked, Ian found he had lost himself. He was a broken child, teenager, and adult. Coming to terms with his childhood, Ian soon discovered he too had become an alcoholic and that his life needed meaning. Seeking help, he found his place and in this book he shares with the reader that discovery of healing and dealing with life’s traumatic experiences.I enjoyed reading this book. Ian’s use of imagery when writing about his experiences was creative and made the reader reflect on the imagery presented. The metaphors used helped to enhance the stories and made the events shared more enjoyable.This book would be a good resource for those who have experienced a similar childhood as Ian; a childhood where there was either substance abuse or the absence of a parent due to an addiction or work. Reading about Ian’s experience will help the reader to evaluate their own upbringing and, hopefully, to begin or assist in the healing process. I am sure many can relate to the episodes that Ian has shared in his book and by relating to them the reader can gain some kind of understanding of how such events do, in fact, affect us in our adult life.I recommend this book to any adult or even to any teenager who might have lived with or dealt with addiction. Although the book doesn’t use any profane language or go into detail about sexual or abusive situations, I would suggest the reader be mature as the content does talk about Ian’s experiences of being involved in an alcoholic home and the experimentation of drugs and alcohol.As Fr. Richard Rohr put it, “Ian Cron has the gift of making his human journey a parable for all of our journeys. Read this profound book and be well fed, and freed”.—————————————————————————————————————–Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”