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

Ian Morgan Cron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2011

"When I first discovered the grainy picture in my mother's desk-me as a towheaded two year old sitting in what I remember was a salmon-orange-stained lifeboat-I was overwhelmed by the feeling that the boy in the boat was not waving and laughing at the person snapping the photo as much as he was frantically trying to get the attention of the man I am today. The boy was beckoning me to join him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory. He was gambling that if we survived the passage, we might discover an ocean where the past would become the wind at our back rather than a driving gale to the nose of our boat. This book is the record of that voyage."  

At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, also worked for the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggles with alcoholism, upended the world of a boy struggling to become a man. Decades later, as he faces his own personal demons, Ian realizes the only way to find peace is to voyage back through a childhood marked by extremes--privilege and hardship, violence and tenderness, truth and deceit--that he's spent years trying to forget. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Redemptive and consoling with bright moments of humor...this story is chock-full of sacredness and hope. Cron is one of only a few spirituality authors who could articulate these themes as poignantly."

Publishers Weekly --Publishers Weekly

"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."
    

Fr. Richard Rohr, author of Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

"Ian Morgan Cron writes with astonishing energy and freshness. It is - rather like Augustine's Confessions - a testimony to the unfinished business of grace."

The Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams - The Archbishop of Canterbury

From the Author

"Ian Morgan Cron writes with astonishing energy and freshness; his metaphors stick fast in the imagination. This is neither a simple memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and resolution. It is - rather like Augustine's Confessions - a testimony to the unfinished business of grace."

- The Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams - The Archbishop of Canterbury

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 257 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (June 7, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0849946107
• ISBN-13: 978-0849946103
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (271 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #330,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian Morgan Cron is an author, speaker, Episcopal priest, and retreat guide.

To introduce others to St. Francis of Assisi, he authored Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale. His literary debut received accolades from The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Brian McLaren, Fr Richard Rohr, Phyllis Tickle, Tony Campolo, Brennan Manning, and artist Makoto Fujimura.


Ian's latest book "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir...Of Sorts" became a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Publishers Weekly praised it as, "Simultaneously redemptive and consoling with bright moments of humor...this story is chock-full of sacredness and hope. Cron is one of only a few spirituality authors who could articulate these themes as poignantly."

In addition to writing and speaking, Ian is an adjunct priest at Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut and a doctoral student at Fordham University (The Jesuit University in New York) where he is studying Christian spirituality.

Ian adores the Rolling Stone's record Exile on Main Street, and the melody to Lulu's 1967 hit song "To Sir, With Love" has been stuck in his head for more than thirty years. He can explain the former, but not the latter. He divides his time between homes in Tennessee and Vermont with his wife, three children, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Ella.

For more information, please visit www.iancron.com.

For Speaking: Chaffee Management Group
Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Cron's Memoir Knocks You Socks Off June 7, 2011

By Amy L. Maris

Format:Paperback

If you've read any of Cron's other books, this memoir will knock your socks off. If you haven't, then reading this will make you want to read more.
Having a dad who worked for the CIA without your knowing it is one thing, but having an alcoholic dad is another thing entirely. Cron issues a disclaimer at the beginning that hedges the expectation of the reader to hear the `truth' about his childhood. I don't think he needs this. There's enough detail here to make it totally believable, and poignantly so.
The life he led as a child is the stuff of black and white films. He recounts a childhood in Greenwich Village of both privilege and horror, and a gradual coming to faith despite a rigid immersion in parochial school, and a gripping drug addiction in adolescence, that continued to plague him in adulthood.
My mainstream evangelical self squirmed at his assertion that he actually heard the voice of Christ pleading for `forgiveness', but then, given Cron's unconventional way of expressing his faith, it fits.
I read this latest work of Cron's just the way I ingested the last one, "Chasing Francis". With zest. Cron is a gifted writer who knows how to salt the page with just enough hyperbole and a gentle touch of poetry.
I received this complimentary copy from Thomas Nelson Publishers in return for my honest opinion of the book.

101 of 131 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Out of True June 10, 2011

By hardtruth

Format:Paperback

I love to read. Really love it. So much so that I will mute the sound on my TV and read the closed-captioned dialog just for fun. When I was offered the chance to be sent free books on Christian Living and the Bible, in exchange for a written review, I jumped at it.
The first book I was sent was by Ian Morgan Cron, published this year by Thomas Nelson. The title, Jesus, My Father and the CIA, was a real eye-catcher, but it turned out the sub-title shed the most light on the story: "a memoir...of sorts." By page four, the author lets us in on the meaning of his actual genre: "This work,' he writes, "dances on the hyphen between memoir and autobiographical fiction." The problem I have with this pseudomemoir, is that I don't know when to enter in and identify with it as a blood-bought narrative or stand back and admire it as clever storycraft. I read the book struggling to know if I should really grieve over him huddled in bed against his spy/drunken father's brutal punches, really weep over his longsuffering Irish-Catholic mother, or care too deeply about his own abusive drinking and self-indulgent appetites when he can flippantly describe himself like a, "like a Hoover set on deep shag." Then there is the whole Jesus thing, or is there?
We are given all the requisite details of the life of an Irish Catholic boy in mid-twentieth century Connecticut - fearsome nuns, benign priests, fragrant masses and holy sacraments. He loves the pageantry of sounds and the sights and the feel of the Bishop's "fat thumb" rubbing his temple after he makes his first communion. He remains "fascinated by the Eucharist," and credits this life-long affection for leading him to seminary, youth ministry, sobriety (in that order) and into his present vocation of the Episcopal priesthood. But Jesus only shows up in two significant places in the unfolding docudrama of his life. There is the bloody, lifeless Jesus on the church crucifix and the neatly coiffed and haloed Jesus on his classroom wall. Both mock him in his suffering: "There was no God who loved me or my father or anyone else so much that he died for us. Jesus'tomb wasn't empty. It just hadn't been found yet." He identifies his need for salvation and the fact that he feels "out of true," but misses the Savior: "I was sure there was some indefinable darkness in me that I needed to make reparation to God for..." and yet because he believed that "God had betrayed me, that our estrangement was His fault," he writes, "It was Jesus who deserved to hear the cock crow three times, not me." How then, does this person, who describes the Catholic practice of First Holy Communion as, "the liturgical equivalent of becoming a `made man' in the Mafia," become a priest who "feels at home" on the altar?
Does he eventually fall at Jesus feet in repentance, like doubting Thomas and say: "My Lord and My God!" Not exactly. Instead we are told that during a mass, as the priest is lifting the elements of bread and wine and changing them into real body and blood of Christ, he hears a voice, saying, "Forgive me, Ian. I'm sorry, Ian, please forgive me. Will you pardon me Ian. Now we are both forgiven." And just like that, Ian forgives Jesus for his sins against him, and all is well with their souls.
It is a dangerous thing to weave fiction into doctrine and vise versa and this book does both. It makes the doctrine look foolish and the fiction sound believable, but it disserves the purposes of each. The root of the author's confusion can be summed up in a line found eleven pages before the conclusion: "Maybe some of the more fantastic Bible stories are really true. Maybe the power of the Lord can embolden a kid to kill a giant with a slingshot. Maybe grace can make a rascal noble or a coward brave, even if it's only for a moment." But sadly, maybe is just a breath away from "maybe not." And if the Bible is nothing more the original pseudomemoir, the contents of which "dance on the hyphen" between life-changing, God-breathed truth and fantastical, man-made fiction, all of it must be suspect. Sadly, Jesus, My Father and the CIA is so "out of true" in its depiction of the actual gospel of Jesus Christ, that I could not recommend it except as a cautionary tale about what happens when man-centered, sentimentalized religion replaces Christ-centered, Bible-saturated faith.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a delightful book May 11, 2011

By Maggi Dawn

Format:Paperback

I have just finished reading this delightful and moving new book. I know Ian is a good writer (it was my privilege to be one of his first reviewers when Chasing Francis was published), and he is also a friend. So I would have read it come what may. But one chapter in, I was hooked: a proper read of this was no labour of love, I was simply captivated by Ian's lyrical language, his ability to weave anecdotes into legends, and to paint characters so that they climb right out of the pages in full technicolor.

The book begins and ends at an altar, and in between he tells the stories of his unfolding life. It's a mark of a good memoir, I think, that although the story is particular to the author, there is a complete sense of identity with the reader in the way the stories evince the recognisable emotions of growing up and finding one's place in the world - the longing of the isolated, clever kid to be accepted by his school friends, the agonised shame when a stranger discovers your family's darker secrets, the deep grief of loss, and moments of delirious joy in between. A story about setting off explosives in the woods becomes a tale of belonging; an adventure in which his mother takes him on a legendary roller-coaster and teaches him to face down the darkness leaps off the page like a parable of survival. It's a story of how the dark secrets of childhood need to be unleashed, and of the deep gratitude that flows from finding at last that from the jumble of pieces life throws at you, a cohesive pattern can emerge.

This book is a joy to read: not only did it make me laugh and cry, it also had that magical capacity, in the spaces between the lines, to cast shards of light back onto my own life. Thank you, Ian Morgan Cron, for a wonderful book.