Secret Father: A Novel (Carroll, James) [Hardcover]

James Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 2003 | Series: Carroll, James

It is 1961. Khrushchev is hurling threats, a U.S. spy plane has been shot down over the Soviet Union, tensions are rising. Berlin has been cut off from the West: it’s only a matter of weeks until the Wall will be erected. The United States and Americans abroad face dangers they had never imagined. Against this backdrop, the best-selling novelist and historian James Carroll tells an unforgettable love story that illuminates a key moment in history with the passions of those who lived it.
Three teenagers from an American school in West Germany travel to Berlin to join a May Day rally on the Communist side of the divided city. Propelled by nadve ideals and in rebellion against preordained futures, they stumble into the center of an international incident. Paul, the father of one of the boys, and Charlotte, the elegant German-born mother of another, set off to rescue their children from the East German Stasi, which has detained them. Over the course of a weekend, Paul and Charlotte struggle with personal secrets, growing passion, and the weight of a generation that survived World War II only to face the loss of its children to the engulfing paranoia of the Cold War.
Secret Father inexorably pulls the reader into the heart of flashpoint Berlin. In this powerful tale, missed signals, cloaked motives, false postures, and panicked responses echo tragically across borders and generations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The heart of this fine novel, Carroll's first in nine years, is spelled out in the book's epigraph, a line from Dostoyevski: "Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing." Seventeen-year-old Michael Montgomery, crippled by polio, lives with his banker father, Paul, in Frankfurt, Germany. Ulrich "Rick" Healy is Michael's rebellious best friend, son of an American general, David Healy, and his German wife, Charlotte. Katharine "Kit" Carson is Rick's girlfriend, also an army brat. The year is 1961 and all three attend the American high school in Wiesbaden. Rick, a budding socialist and leader of the three, decides they should cut school and travel to Berlin to attend the great May Day parade in the Eastern sector. The trip begins as a lark, but descends into chaos after their capture by East German police on trumped up currency-fraud charges. Paul and Charlotte race to Berlin to rescue their children, unaware that Rick is carrying a secret roll of film that if discovered could ignite World War III. Carroll writes with rich, lyrical ease: "Clusters of spring flowers in every color wore the beads of the recent rain like a dust of glass." His characters are richly drawn, and the pieces of his impeccably paced story fit together with the cool precision of a Mercedes-Benz. He plays the cards of his plot perfectly, each new element a revelation, leaving the reader hungrily turning the pages until the riveting story is told and the lesson is learned, that real love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing. A few electrifying days prove enough to transform the lives of these fascinating characters-and the world-forever.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Carroll, author of the best-selling memoir An American Requiem (1996), returns to fiction with a cold war coming-of-age tale that captures both the particular tensions of the era and the universal yearnings of the young. Michael Montgomery is a 15-year-old American boy living in Frankfurt with his business executive father. A polio victim, Michael chafes under the restraint of both leg braces and his father's overprotective care (his mother's recent death is a constant source of unspoken grief between father and son). What better way for Michael to taste a little freedom than a verboten road trip to Berlin with his American school friends Katherine and Rick. Youthful rebellion turns serious when the teens are detained crossing into East Berlin (the Wall is days away from being erected). With an international incident threatened if Rick's stepfather's secret service connections are revealed, Michael's father and Rick's German mother rush to Berlin to intercede. There's much more to it than that, of course, and Carroll, telling the story in flashback through alternating narrators, ratchets the tension nicely while vividly evoking the cold war atmosphere and effectively contrasting the teens' naivete with the East Germans' realpolitik. Carroll's weakness for melodrama, apparent in his earlier novels, is noticeable here, too, especially in the personal relationships, but his page-turning readability provide satisfactory compensation. Entertaining popular fiction. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2nd Printing edition (August 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618152849
• ISBN-13: 978-0618152841
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,161,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. A distinguishedscholar-in-residence at Suffolk University, he is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a regular contributor to the Daily Beast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spying for thinkers, April 20, 2005

By 

Jonathan S. Holman "Spy reader" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Father: A Novel (Paperback)

I think I have read every "spy novel" on the planet, from old Ambler to the current day. This is a special one.

First of all, Carroll is not a spy novelist, but rather a novelist who wrote here about spies. His development of character, use of language, and pacing all are quite distant from the likes of Robert Ludlum. Not that Ludlum isn't fine - I read him also - but Ludlum is about action and noise and not about characters or feelings. Think rather of John LeCarre but without LeCarre's depression, or Alan Furst but with more evolved characters.

Carroll uses a tried-and-true technique, with chapters moving back and forth between the viewpoint of the two primary characters. This is momentarily jarring the first time it happens but then slides nicely into place, no longer intrusive. The book flows well.

This is a first class effort, comparable to Furst's Dark Star and Ambler's A Coffin for Demetrios and the best of LeCarre. But it will make you think.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fathers, sons, and the iron curtain between them., September 5, 2003

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Secret Father: A Novel (Carroll, James) (Hardcover)

Two families, two sons, and the devastating complications that engulf their lives during one weekend in April, 1961, provide a unique perspective on international gamesmanship in Berlin during the Cold War. These are tense times, border incidents are frequent, and the Berlin Wall is only days away from construction. At age seventeen, Michael Montgomery and Rick Healy are less concerned with the complications of the Cold War than they are with their rebellions against their fathers. Both are "trying on" new political ideas--in Rick's case, the idealistic goals of socialism and the philosophy of Marcuse.

In alternating sections, Paul Montgomery, the father, and Michael Montgomery, the son, each reveal their thoughts and hopes for the future, and as the story unfolds, Carroll creates two entirely separate worlds, each fully drawn and presented as truth. The reader, moving back and forth between the generations, has the advantage both of hindsight regarding the Berlin crisis and insight into all the characters, and the story comes alive in the best narrative tradition. When Michael, Rick, and their friend Katharine Carson decide to skip school and go to East Berlin for the May Day parade and weekend festivities, Rick takes his stepfather's duffle bag, which, unbeknownst to him, contains some important film. The ensuing turmoil, which traps them in the eastern sector, involves both families as they try to avoid a potential international cataclysm.

Through his focus on families affected by the Cold War, Carroll achieves more universality than one usually expects of the thriller genre. The emotional context he creates for the international intrigue leads the reader to identify with both the adults and the young people and to observe the "wall" existing between them. The title, suggesting a "secret father" lurking in the background, tantalizes the reader with infinite possibilities and plot complications throughout the novel, but exactly how this person affects the conclusion may come as a surprise. Though the book is sometimes a bit melodramatic, it is a thoughtful thriller, full of betrayals, threats, murder, and international skullduggery, and it brings the traditional Cold War espionage story to new life. Mary Whipple

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not just a spy thriller, December 22, 2003

By 

Simon Crowe (Greenville, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Father: A Novel (Carroll, James) (Hardcover)

SECRET FATHER is really two novels in one. First is an espionage thriller set in early 1960s Berlin, just before the Berlin Wall went up. Also, and more importantly, SECRET FATHER is a moving meditation on fathers and sons, and the things that make meaningful communication between them difficult.
The story concerns three teenagers:Michael Montgomery, Kit, and Ulrich (a German). They journey to East Berlin to see a May Day parade, flush with youthful energy. Michael and his father, an American banker, split narrative duties. Carroll cuts between the kids (betrayed and arrested) and Mr. Montgomery's alliance with Ulrich's mother to try to win their sons' freedom. Complicating matters are the fact that Ulrich's mother is now married to an American spy and that Ulrich now possesses a mysterious film cannister everyone seems to want.
The idea of fathers and sons knowing each other recurs throughout. The identity of Ulrich's real father is important, as is Michael's strained relationship with Mr. Montgomery. In a moving coda set just after the Wall falls in the '80s, Ulrich makes sure HIS son will know his father, even if he may not be around. Highly recommended.