My CIA: A Memoir

The most poetic account of a woman coming to terms with her childhood being raised in a CIA household. The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities listed My CIA as a top ten book for 2012: Naming My CIA as a top ten book for 2012, Sarah Lee Fox of The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities (RALPH) wrote, "Ms. McCord is a charming writer, and I was knocked out by my My CIA. There is a mix here of the normal and ordinary life, and of the very exotic if now existentially threatening previous life . . . She's a stylist well capable of blending the banal and the scary." —The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Lies and secrecy are just everyday things when you live so close to the CIA. "My CIA" is a memoir from Katherine McCord who shares her stories of growing up so close to the CIA, as her father's missions kept them in the dark about his actions and fate, and an odd air of uncertainty even as they lived in the quiet Midwest. A familial tale of being so close to the CIA, "My CIA" is an informative and curious read. —Midwest Book Review You'll want to read My CIA in one go, like I did, greedily, ready for every twist and in-breath that comes from the intricate layers of this expressionist tale. The poetic suspense of My CIA is a bit like Our Man in Havana colliding with Ariel, with deadpan humor and a poetic wit that cuts through the interstices between personal and public history. The family McCord creates, itself a kind of secret agency, operates like a postmodern dollhouse family with the banal-going-on-mysterious behaviors of Mother, Sisters, the Girls and the Father juxtaposed with genuine enigmas. What family espionage is revealed during a conversation between the Sisters where one holds the phone to the washing machine and the other responds, "But you wash everything"? There are hints of underhand influence and Who is the manipulator? floats above the pages making the reader want to investigate anyone's daily reality; but McCord's language is true blue. My CIA is at once smooth and complex, a comedy of manners and ghostly politics played on the stage of the Cold War, anticipating the epilogue of the 21st century. Best enjoyed with a martini, shaken not stirred. —Kathleene West, author of Summer of the Sub-Comandante and Water Witching Katherine McCord's heartbreaking lyric memoir, My CIA, is a fine example of a literary work in which the artist has found the perfect form to contain the content, a shapely vessel to hold shards of memory and loss. Just as the life and identity of a CIA agent (the author's father) is provisional, the persona narrating this story of a family fractured by a mysterious father's absences is a shape-shifter: now knowing, now child-like, now elegaic, now funny, now deeply compassionate and forgiving, and always wise and razor-sharp. Whether McCord is writing about getting on a plane in the middle of the night as a child to go to Nepal or about driving over curbs after a run to the grocery store, talking to her children or mother or sister, or packing up the house to take her family and the dog on vacation in Maine, her voice sings. This memoir is haunting, disturbing, beautiful, and resonant. I could not put it down. —Natalia Rachel Singer, author of Scraping by in the Big Eighties