BOOKS: My Father's Secret War

WWII Biographical Reconstruction

This is a book I might not have finished, but for the Review. At times, it was difficult to keep reading, with a narrative that jumps between past and present, biographical fact and conjecture.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning journalist, Lucinda Franks meticulously recounts her life-long search for connection with her father, a WWII veteran, at the end of his life. Franks uses all her many skills, and considerable talent, as a journalist to figure out whether or not her father was a spy during WWII. At times she wonders fearfully whether her father was a good guy or a bad guy, since the information she can uncover is so sketchy -- and he's not talking, committed to the oath he made never to speak of his experiences during the war.

MY FATHER'S SECRET WAR is undeniably great writing. The framework of the story may have been more compelling if Franks had focused more on her father's wartime experiences as she was able to reconstruct them, and less on her detective work and ongoing frustration with her father and other family members. The best part of the book is found toward the end, when Franks shares personal letters from her father to her mother during the war -- in the letters, Franks discovers a man she never knew. Like many veterans, the man that returned was very different from the optimistic, loving young man who shipped out.

As a wartime Biographical Reconstruction of this type, I would highly recommend:
OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER by Jedwin Smith (Vietnam)