| Discovering Ireland…in New York
By Maura Conlon-McIvor,
author of FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's Code
 I
was Maura long before my birth. My father, a New York-born FBI agent,
had savored the name since first hearing it in law school, hoping someday
to bequeath it upon a daughter. Maura was a fine gift, but not always
straightforward. "Nice meeting you, Mona. Is that Hawaiian?" People had
a hard time with my name, and when I was young I never had the nerve to
correct them.
We lived about a 40-minute drive from Hollywood, and 15-minutes to Disneyland.
I didn’t measure the exact miles because when you’re growing up near the
happiest place on earth and the town where movies are made, who wants to
hear that Maura is Irish for Mary? Why bother mentioning
cultural roots when I’m cycling to the noon showing of The Son of Flubber
or dreaming of Tinkerbell’s cool outfits? Ireland wasn’t even on the
map.
 That
is, until my Irish-born grandmother, Molly, arrived from New York City.
Chuckling with her Celtic brogue, she handed me a beautifully illustrated
children’s book about her homeland. I can still see my first images of
leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold, double-decker buses, little girls
with red hair, and shamrocks. I suspected the thrills in Ireland surpassed
every highly coveted "E" ticket ride at Disneyland, and that the doors
to this emerald kingdom didn’t close at midnight. Ireland was chockablock
with secrets awaiting discovery.
The clues seemed to reside back East. My grandmother, I learned,
wasn’t the fairy tale sort who lived in a shoe with some old man Hubbard.
She was a County Clare-born farm girl who emigrated to the Bronx, the eldest
of several children, and part of a New York-based clan—an Irish clan—a
concept foreign to our sun-kissed housing tract. My parents, too, added
their own mysterious fuel: around our house, New York was never called
New York, but back home. It didn’t matter that my parents
had lived in California for decades, and raised five kids there.
Life took an interesting turn when I traveled to New York as a teenager.
No longer was I spelling my name after introductions. I wasn’t Laura,
or Mona the Hawaiian, but a veritable Irish-American princess. I visited
relations in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, startled and fascinated to
meet others with equally Celtic names.
I met young girls who did Irish step dance. I read Irish newspapers
actually published in Manhattan. I listened to my relatives sing Irish
songs well into the night, wistful as they told tales about the St. Patrick’s
Day parade, and the many years they’ve marched through rain, sleet, sun
or snow. My Uncle Ed, a tall Catholic priest from Brooklyn, drove me in
his Checker cab throughout New York, pointing out the Irish neighborhoods,
and the places where my grandparents were reared, regaling me with clan
history.
I learned about my Irish American grandfather, Michael Hogan, who with
an eighth grade education, worked as a stereographer for the old New
York World-Telegraph and later the Post. Perhaps my grandfather
chose the newspaper business because he loved words. By all accounts, he
was a gregarious storyteller. Our last photograph of him was taken on his
final trip to California, which coincided with St. Paddy’s Day. In Los
Angeles, we got to be Irish every March 17. The icing on our cupcakes turned
green with the help of food coloring, and the beef was corned, not roast.
In New York, however, it seemed you could be Irish everyday.
Years later I packed my bags, moved to Manhattan, and found a job, like
my grandfather, in the publishing business. I visited the old neighborhoods,
attended Irish cultural events, dined at the Pig and Whistle, always enthusiastic
to discover the waiter’s county of origin. These Celtic connections made
back home my home. Such things I wrote in letters to my father,
thanking him for my lyrical name.
"When I was a starry-eyed 13-year-old, I confided to my older brother,
Michael, that I wanted to write a book about love, for the entire world
to read. Already I was scribbling quixotic poetry in my journal, philosophizing
into my tape recorder, and feeling the world could use a story that sparked
the heart, a tale about growing up in a particular family named Conlon,
about excavating the important secrets we keep buried undercover.
I began sketching FBI Girl around the time my father proudly
gave me all his correspondence received from bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover.
Dad was a special agent for 27 years in the Los Angeles area. And that's
about all we knew growing up. When I sat down and read his stash of letters,
I found scribbled all over them his wry observations about being in the
FBI, or his reflections about life in general. This gift was typical of
what he and I had shared all our lives -- communication wrapped in code.
It was always my job to read between the lines and uncover the real meaning.
Perhaps my father was like many of our father's in that respect.
I've had the good fortune to live in various parts of the country, including
such fine places as southern California, Iowa City, Berkeley, New York
City, Winston-Salem, Syracuse, and the Pacific Northwest. Given that my
father was a family man, he would have preferred if I'd stayed in the neighborhood.
But if I had, he'd have missed the chance to say, "Hold on. I'll get your
mother" when he spotted me, which he always did, at the front doorstep,
suitcase in hand, home again."
"I lie in bed at night with my yellow daisy sheets up to my nose, and
Dad comes into my bedroom to snap shut my window. He does not explain why
he locks everything up, but I have figured it out: The world is full of
criminals, and it is the job of my father, Special Agent Joe Conlon, to
keep them out of our house."
In a house teeming with life, young Maura, voted the Most Quiet Girl
in Catholic school, notices everything but says little. She is drawn to
the bureau drawer where her father, FBI agent Joe Conlon, places his badge
at night, eager to penetrate his secret world.
The time is the late 1960s, and Vietnam and the Cold War are fomenting
unrest outside Maura's suburban Los Angeles home. Inside, the Conlons are
still bound by tradition: baseball games, Sunday dinner of roast beef and
mashed potatoes, and The FBI on TV. Under the watchful gaze of J.
Edgar Hoover's picture, Maura's mother, a former New York bathing beauty,
remains a homemaker even as she slips out for assertiveness training.
And there's the one unshakable rule of all: Joe Conlon never talks about
his job. In fact, he rarely speaks at all. Believing that he communicates
in code, Maura is determined to crack it. She uses clues gleaned from Nancy
Drew mysteries, eavesdrops on adult conversations, and spins larger-than-life
fantasies in her head, with her Down's syndrome brother at her side.
But her flights of fancy turn sober with a murder in the family. Suddenly
her father's silence speaks volumes, and she learns a lesson from him about
fierce love during a time of devastating loss.
Bathed with luminous nostalgia, resonating with hilarious and painful
memories, FBI Girl is the coming-of-age story of a highly imaginative
girl and a passionate homage to family bonds, the trials that test them
and the triumphs that make them stronger.
| Author Maura Conlon-McIvor graduated from The University of
Iowa and has worked as a journalist, editor, and producer on both coasts.
She holds a doctorate in depth psychology and lives with her husband in
Portland, Ore. Her memoir, FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's
Code, is available from Warner books at all major booksellers in August
2004. |
What People Are Saying
FBI Girl by Maura Conlon-McIvor is one of three debut
books featured in the "Readers' Prize 2004" section in the August issue
of
ELLE MAGAZINE.
Following is a quote:
"With a style that cleverly matures as the writer recounts her childhood,
this book is a delightful and compelling read that delicately depicts a
loving, if strained, relationship between an imaginative, slightly kooky
daughter and the by-the-book father she idolizes. Conlon-McIvor successfully
reanimates a shelf-worn topic and crafts a book exploring the dynamics
of an emotionally and physically absent father."
Library Journal:
Conlon-McIvor writes lovingly of her childhood in Southern California
as the second of five children of Hoover-era FBI agent Joe Conlon and his
homemaker wife, Mary. The author's father clearly held center stage in
her childhood, while her youngest brother, a Down syndrome child, was the
heart of the family. Conlon-McIvor spent years keeping her own FBI log,
trying desperately to glean information-any information-from her silent
father. As she got older, she came to see that his quiet nature was not
just the requisite FBI-agent reticence but part of his true personality.
This realization, coupled with support from her mother, helped her overcome
her own painful shyness. Sadly, the author relates that a loved one of
the Conlon family was murdered, but she does not make the heartbreaking
details the focus of her book. Readers will enjoy this journey through
Conlon-McIvor's Irish American, Catholic-school childhood. An endearing,
truthful, and joyful account of coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s; highly
recommended. --Karen Sandlin Silverman, Center for Applied Research
Booklist:
Growing up Catholic in the 1960s, Conlon-McIvor’s favorite religious
figure was the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her favorite book character was
Nancy Drew. Mysteries fascinated her, and no wonder; her father was an
FBI agent, whose car trunk was filled with bullets. Her dream was to follow
his path and crack "the code" that made his every glance and word so deliciously
baffling. It took many years before Conlon-McIvor understood that her father’s
taciturn, moody behavior had little to do with his job; it grew from deep
sadness and an inability to express emotion. In this touchingly honest
memoir, always true to a child’s point of view, the author remakes herself
as the naive child and awkward teen she was, growing up in a family mostly
held together by commitment to her youngest brother, born with Down syndrome.
Memories of her long-suffering mother, her beloved uncle Father Jack, and,
most of all, her father, whose "code" she finally cracks, blend beautifully
in this occasionally funny, affecting account of family ties and personal
growth. ––Booklist
Publisher's Weekly:
Conlon-McIvor was a Hoover-era FBI agent’s daughter, and her diverting
memoir tells her story from birth to adolescence while depicting her father
as a man so taciturn that she became convinced his every word was code
for something else. As a kid, determined to decipher his character and
the other silences around her, the author cast herself in an ongoing dream
life as a Nancy Drew–type agent. This made her somewhat withdrawn and silent
herself, and at her Catholic school she became known as the shy girl. At
home her mother and siblings livened things up, even though the condition
of Joey, the youngest, born with Down’s syndrome, made her father even
more remote.
Other relatives in the extended Irish-American family, especially Maura’s
New York uncle Father Jack, provided a sense of a larger world in a home
where the picture of J. Edgar Hoover frowned down from the wall. When tragedy
struck, playing at secret agent didn’t help as it used to, and Conlon-McIvor
finally grew into herself. She conveys her time (the 1960s) and setting
(Los Angeles) with precision and detail; her feel for story, structure
and understatement rightfully earns the poignancy of many moments.
"FBI Girl is a gorgeous, sumptuous book. Conlon-McIvor takes
a subject (herself and her family) that might have sunk in other hands,
beats egg white under her words and the whole thing rises like a dream.
It's a love story for her people and for a time and place. Read it."
– Alexandra Fuller, author of New York Times bestseller Don't
Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
"Beguiling . . . Few memoirs in recent memory offer such wit, poignancy,
and pleasure."
– Karen Karbo, author of three novels, each a New York Times
Notable Book of the Year, and the nonfiction books The Stuff of Life
(a memoir) and Generation Ex: Tales from the Second Wives Club.
Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly,
the New Republic, and the New York Times, among other publications
"FBI Girl is touching and funny, inspiring and tragic, enlightening
and sad. I closed the book with tears in my eyes and admiration in my heart
for the girl Maura Conlon was and the writer she became."
– Beverly Donofrio, author of cult classic Riding in Cars with Boys,
and Looking for Mary
"The beauty of the enthralling FBI Girl is that it speaks to
the universal themes of love and dignity, and the healing power that comes
from the heart. While memoirs, by nature, are about one person, the best
teach us something about ourselves. Maura Conlon-McIvor does that with
a great deal of poignancy, a dose of humor, and moments of real heartbreak.
This is a book to treasure."
– Tom Hallman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Sam:
The Boy Behind the Mask
"Oh, I love this book. It offers us a bygone Los Angeles, Catholic School,
the FBI -- all woven into a funny, moving, beautifully rendered account
of a girl coming to know her father."
– Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary and The Mind
at Work
"An unusual achievement. Joe, Joey, and young Maura Conlon evolve, page
by page, heartbeat by heartbeat in this most notable work."
– Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
"A pitch-perfect rendering of the mysteries of parents played to the
audience of their young children. Conlon-McIvor achieves something special."
– Frances Kuffel, author of Passing for Thin
Order the book
To order online, check out these links.
Powells.com
Amazon.com
BarnesandNoble.com
For more information, visit www.fbigirl.com,
or www.writtenvoices.com.)
 
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