In this dramatic, intimate, and tragic memoir, James Carroll recovers a
time that none of us will ever forget - a time when parents could no
longer understand their sons and daughters and when young people could
no longer recognize the country they had been raised to love. The wounds
inflicted in that time have never fully healed, but healing is something
that Carroll accomplishes in telling his family's remarkable story. The
Carroll family stood at the center of all the conflicts swirling around
the Vietnam War. Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll was the director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency through most of the war, a former FBI
man who helped choose bombing targets but distrusted his fellow generals
who wanted to use the Bomb. His wife, Mary, was a devoted friend of
Francis Cardinal Spellman, the hawkish military vicar, yet she felt
sympathy for antiwar priests and tried to balance her devotion to her
husband with love for her sons. This shattering history takes its shape
from the choices made by three of the five Carroll sons. Dennis, marked
by fierce conscience, became a draft fugitive and exile. Brian, deeply
loyal, joined the FBI and was assigned to track down draft resisters and
Catholic radicals. James, wanting to fulfill the dream his father had
embraced and then abandoned, became a Roman Catholic priest. But he
quickly aligned himself with the very Catholic radicals and draft
resisters who were one brother's target and another brother's support.
While the war in Southeast Asia raged and the streets of America
exploded with protest, Joe and Mary saw the precious world of their own
family, centered on a gracious house on Generals' Row, collapse. None of
the Carrollswould ever be the same.
