MY FATHER'S SECRET WAR


The story of a remote silent man who kept his breathtaking past and his real character a carefully guarded secret - until the day his daughter found out who he really was. A World War Two Spy Memoir.

Reading Guide

Enjoy My Father's Secret War with your local book club.

1) What are the meanings for you in the title My Father's Secret War?

2) What affect did Tom Frank's war secrets have on his family? On his own personality?

3) Did his silence about his WWII activities seem familiar to you? Did your parents also kept their war experiences hidden? How did it shape them as people? As parents?

4) How did Tom's suppressed memories of the war come to the surface during Lucinda and Penny's childhood?

5) After his tumultuous marriage and the loss of his company, tom became an alcoholic, and seemed to give up caring for himself. Do you think the way he handled these life blows were in any way linked to the aftermath of what he did in the war?

6) Was he justified in killing the Nazi Sergeant who discovered him taking files in Gestapo headquarters? In advising and carrying out the liquidation of the double agent who was stealing German weapons secrets for the Russians?

7) The letters that his daughter found were full of passionate love for his wife, in contrast to the distant relationship observed by his children. What killed such a strong attachment?

8) What role did pat play in his life? Do you consider his adultery tawdry or was it in some ways understandable?

9) Do you think the soldiers of world war two suffered from undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder? Would they have benefited from psychological help? Was their PTSD qualitatively different from that experienced by soldiers returning from Iraq?

10) Before she found out that he was a spy, was Lucinda unreasonably angry and lacking in acceptance of her father? Or was her attitude justified in some way?

11) Was her questioning of her father about his war activities too relentless? Too harsh? Were her reasons justified?

12) As the years go by, do you think she will look back and experience the resolution of the relationship that she had always sought? Or will there be lingering questions, doubts, and guilt?



© 2008 Lucinda Franks. Design by Andreas Viklund.