In the Darkroom

Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize winner’s memoir of her search for her enigmatic father is “an absolute stunner . . . probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you’d never expect” (New York Times). “In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things—obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.” So begins Susan Faludi’s extraordinary inquiry. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, her investigation turned personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father’s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Her struggle to come to grips with her father’s metamorphosis takes her across borders—historical, political, religious, sexual—to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you “choose,” or is it the very thing you can’t escape? “Riveting . . . Ms. Faludi unfolds her father’s story like the plot of a detective novel.” —Wall Street Journal “Penetrating and lucid . . . rich [and] arresting.” —New York Times Book Review “A gripping exploration of sexual, national, and ethnic identity.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review