Secret Father FROM THE PUBLISHER
It is 1961. Khrushchev is hurling threats, a U.S. spy plane had 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 have never imagined.
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 naive 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.
FROM THE CRITICS
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 - Boston Magazine
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.
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.
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