FBI GIRL: How I Learned to Crack My Father's Code . . . with Love

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Nonfiction
A warrior’s closeted heart

FBI GIRL:
HOW I LEARNED TO CRACK MY FATHER’S CODE . . . WITH LOVE
By Maura Conlon-McIvor
306 pp. Resource Publications

Reviewed by Diane Diekman

FBI Girl: How I Learned To Crack My Father’s Code . . . With Love is the coming-of-age memoir of Maura Conlon-McIvor. Originally published in 2004, it is being reissued in softcover and as an audiobook. The story was adapted for the stage at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The press release promised a Nancy-Drew-type murder mystery in real life, with a little-brother sidekick and an FBI father. This reviewer’s expectations were high.

Joe Conlon is a career FBI agent who moved his family from New York City to Los Angeles, where he and his wife raise their five children in the late 1960s. Seemingly unable to show feelings of love, he interacts with his children mainly through his passion for baseball.

The memoir is written in present tense, through the voice of fourth-grader Maura, the second eldest child. She fantasizes about how her father’s FBI work forces him to keep secrets from her. One Sunday evening, while the family watches an FBI show on TV, Maura asks her dad if he does the things they’d seen on the show. “Dad does not say anything,” she writes. “He stretches the newspaper past his face, like it is a curtain. I wait for it to drop. Instead he keeps turning pages. I wait for him to speak. Dad turns another page. . .. Dad clears his throat when the second commercial comes on, finally dropping the paper. ‘What is your baseball mitt still doing in here?’”

The book is filled with such instances. When Maura and Joe go for a drive, she waits for him to tell her a story. “I think he just likes to test my patience,” she writes, “to see if I’ll stick around, if I’ll pursue the hidden meanings within his silent ways, or if I will just say forget it and walk away like he does.”

Unlike the promise in the title, I found no resolution, other than the author’s maturing and acceptance. It’s a jumble of scenes viewed through a little girl’s eyes. The mother seems to be as frustrated as the daughter is, without the FBI fantasy to soothe her. What holds this story together is a daughter’s love. “My father’s warrior heart, while closeted much of his adult life, found refuge with my brother Joe Jr., born with Down syndrome,” the author writes in the acknowledgments. “With Joe he was able to pour out unconditional love.” She doesn’t mention PTSD, probably because post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t commonly known in the 1960s. His reticence with his family might today be explained by his World War II experiences in the China-Burma-India theater of war.

Conlon-McIvor appears to have resolved her relationship with her father. FBI Girl will resonate with others who have experienced similar upbringings.

--Diane Diekman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who grew up in South Dakota and currently lives in Sioux Falls. Her biographies are Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story and Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins.

http://lestgoo.id
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