I was hesitant to read Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: a Memoir of Sorts by Ian Morgan. Not because I didn’t think it would be worth it. I knew it would be after seeing reviews, but I have read so many memoirs recently that I wondered if I should try a different genre.
I am glad I did. It is one of the best books I’ve read this year.
In his “memoir….of sorts”, as he calls it Cron chronicles his experience as the child of an alcoholic father who went from working for the CIA to dragging his family into poverty in Connecticut. He shows us a childhood never feeling the love and approval of his father and being disappointed time after time. He talks of his experiences as a child and sensing God in his early years in the Catholic church only to turn away as a teen when it seemed as if God was no longer there. Turning to alcohol in his teens he doesn’t gloss over his own struggle with the addiction.
Yet his story never comes across as angry or bitter. While his sadness shows in his writing his words are ringed with grace. Not only is his prose beautiful, but his story compels us to give grace to our own childhoods.
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