Review for Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me by Ian Cron

If you’ve read any of Cron’s other books, this memoir will knock your socks off. If you haven’t, then reading this will make you want to read more.

Having a dad who worked for the CIA without your knowing it is one thing, but having an alcoholic dad is another thing entirely. Cron issues a disclaimer at the beginning that hedges the expectation of the reader to hear the ‘truth’ about his childhood. I don’t think he needs this. There’s enough detail here to make it totally believable, and poignantly so. 

The life he led as a child is the stuff of black and white films. He recounts a childhood in Greenwich Village of both privilege and horror, and a gradual coming to faith despite a rigid immersion in parochial school, and a gripping drug addiction in adolescence, that continued to plague him in adulthood. 

My mainstream evangelical self squirmed at his assertion that he actually heard the voice of Christ pleading for ‘forgiveness’, but then, given Cron’s unconventional way of expressing his faith, it fits.

I read this latest work of Cron’s just the way I ingested the last one, “Chasing Francis”. With zest. Cron is a gifted writer who knows how to salt the page with just enough hyperbole and a gentle touch of poetry. 

I received this complimentary copy from Thomas Nelson Publishers in return for my honest opinion of the book.