Secret Father

USA Today

Secret Father is very good fiction. It's not so much a spy novel as a suspenseful love story that challenges the conventional wisdom about the Cold War, the war that Americans like to think we won. — Bob Minzesheimer

The New York Times

It is only in Berlin, 28 years later, that the mystery surrounding the events of spring 1961 is finally clarified and, with it, the emotional truths that have long shadowed the story's characters. The book's epigraph from Dostoyevsky -- ''Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing'' -- suggests there is no redemption without pain. But the message of Secret Father is broader: for nations as for individuals, there can be no imagining the future until the past has been quieted. — Alan Riding

The Washington Post

Carroll, whose most recent books have been well-received nonfiction treatises on the Catholic Church such as Constantine's Sword, got his start writing bestselling popular fiction, and he's back at it -- and in best pulp fettle -- in this new novel. — Zofia Smardz

Andrew Rimas

History is what always infuses Carroll's workd and what has given all his books an abiding tincture of wisdom.... [This book's] real character, its message, is the incurable sickness of history.... For all its pathos the novel is nimbly written... He feels for his characters the way a father would.
—Boston Magazine

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. (Aug.) Forecast: Carroll's recent history of the Catholic Church and the Jews, Constantine's Sword, was a bestseller; his memoir, An American Requiem, won the National Book Award. The release of his first novel in nearly a decade will be a publishing event. Author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In his first novel in nine years, Carroll, whose Mortal Friends and Prince of Peace brought him many ardent readers, focuses on a single weekend in 1961, just before the Berlin Wall created an impenetrable barrier between East and West. On an idealistic lark, three American high school students travel to the Communist side of Berlin for the May Day parade. Ensnared by the East Germans for alleged currency violations, they are clapped in jail. Meanwhile, their frantic parents mobilize, with two of them traveling to Berlin to pluck the kids loose. Surprisingly, this generic plot supports a beautifully textured exploration of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and sons, friends and lovers. Love, in its harsh and dreadful facets, is portrayed as a powerful force, capable of fusing hearts but also of destroying them. A wonderful bonus is Carroll's re-creation of the 1961 atmosphere and the tense facts of the Cold War in Berlin. The taut drama of history, interlaced with the emotional sagas of these marvelously drawn figures, makes for a very satisfying narrative. Highly recommended for most collections.-Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It’s 1961, and three high-school friends cut class to attend the May Day rally in East Berlin in the last tense days before the wall goes up. Set apart from their classmates by their seriousness and their intelligence, Ulrich Neuhaus, Michael Montgomery, and Katherine "Kit" Carson come from complicated backgrounds. Leipzig-born Ulrich’s stepfather is an Air Force general and a spook. His mother Charlotte is an aristocrat haunted by her wartime marriage to Ulrich’s father. Kit, a fledgling writer, has an abusive sergeant for a father, an accommodating southern mother, and secret plans to attend Ole Miss. Michael, crippled by polio, lives alone with his overprotective banker father Paul, who blames himself for the accidental death of Michael’s mother. It is the politically studious Ulrich who proposes the disastrous trip that is at the center of Carroll’s somber and evocative look at some of the most frightening times in one of the most frightening places in the Cold War. Keen to pass through the only opening in the Iron Curtain for a look at the country his mother and he fled, Ulrich enlists Michael (who has his father’s car for the week) and Kit (who may be sweet on him) to pose as a debating team headed for a match in West Berlin. On their harrowing trip in the sealed shuttle train from the free West to the island city, eastern guards discover a roll of film in the gym bag Ulrich "borrowed" from his high-ranking stepfather, and the trip begins to go disastrously awry. The three think they’ve fast-talked their way out of trouble, but once they cross into the eastern zone they are scooped up by the authorities. Paul and Charlotte, meanwhile, have used their connections to trace thestudents and begin their own harrowing trip to retrieve them. Novelist and memoirist Carroll, whose 2001 Constantine’s Sword was a bestselling analysis of the Roman Catholic Church’s dealings with the Reich, makes excellent use of his firsthand knowledge of the territory, stumbling only slightly on the romances. Fine period thriller. Author tour

From the Publisher

"Secret Father is very good fiction. It’s not so much a spy novel as a suspenseful love story that challenges the conventional wisdom about the Cold War.” USA Today

"Fine period thriller." Kirkus Reviews

"A cold war coming-of-age tale that captures both the particular tensions of the era and the universal yearnings of the young.... 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... Page-turning readability... Entertaining popular fiction."

Booklist, ALA

"A beautifully textured exploration of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and sons, friends and lovers. Love, in its harsh and dreadful facets, is portrayed as a powerful force, capable of fusing hearts but also of destroying them. A wonderful bonus is Carroll's re-creation of the 1961 atmosphere and the tense facts of the Cold War in Berlin. The taut drama of history, interlaced with the emotional sagas of these marvelously drawn figures, makes for a very satisfying narrative." Library Journal Starred

"History is what always infuses Carroll's work and what has given all his books an abiding tincture of wisdom.... And this, not the little tragedies of the players, is why Secret Father is affecting." Boston Magazine

"The story's setting is political, its pace that of a thriller, but the memories are often personal—of widowhood, fatherhood, first love, late love and youthful folly.... Where Carroll distances himself from the run-of-the-mill spy novel, however, is in the emotional journey that accompanies his characters.... The book's epigraph from Dostoyevsky—"Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing"—suggests there is no redemption without pain. But the message of "Secret Father" is broader: for nations as for individuals, there can be no imagining the future until the past has been quieted." The New York Times Book Review

“An interesting psychological portrait of father and son…Secret Father holds many secrets, the most revealing of which have nothing to do with plot but with human psychology and world history.” The Chicago Tribune

“An uncommonly intelligent espionage story, written with flair… a story of parent-child love, told with quiet wisdom and an undercurrent of deep melancholy.”

The Seattle Times

"Gripping and beautifully written, 'Secret Father' is a remarkable evocation of a tumultuous era and of the power that secrets can hold across generations." Bookpage