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Published Mar 2011
368 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author: a beautifully crafted memoir of his lifelong chase after his father's shadow.
John was eleven months old when his father, Barney Darnton - a war correspondent for The New York Times - was killed in World War II, but his absence left a more profound imprint on the family than any living father could have. John’s mother, a well-known Times reporter and editor, tried to keep alive the dream of raising her two sons in ideal surroundings. When that proved impossible, she collapsed emotionally and physically. But along the way she created such a powerful myth of the father-hero who gave his life for his family, country, and the fourth estate that John followed his footsteps into the same newsroom.
Decades after his father's death, John and his brother, the historian Robert Darnton, began digging into the past to uncover the truth about their parents. To discover who the real-life Barney Darnton was - and in part who he himself is - John delves into turn-of-the-century farm life in Michigan, the anything-goes Jazz Age in Greenwich Village, the lives of hard-drinking war correspondents in the Pacific theater, and the fearful loneliness of the McCarthy years in Washington, D.C. He ends his quest on a beach in Papua New Guinea, where he learns about his father’s last moments from an aged villager who never forgot what he saw sixty-five years earlier.
Intensely moving and vividly descriptive of America over generations, Almost a Family presents a family in which love and devotion were built on an often dazzling framework of deception.
"Starred Review. Exquisitely paced, masterful storytelling." - Kirkus
"Readers interested in the details of a journalist's work will be disappointed with Darnton's use of his career as a mere backdrop. But the narrative he presents, told almost as a mystery story, is engrossing." - Library Journal
"In this unsentimental narrative, Darnton vividly chronicles the high-water era of classic journalism ... but what drives his memoir [is] the quest for deeply buried facts about his parents and their relationship." - Publishers Weekly
"Written with elegance, rigor and nostalgia, John Darnton's superb evocation of his father's death as war correspondent in the Pacific and his influence on his life as a foreign correspondent will move and enchant." - Elie Wiesel, author of Night
"A brave, heartbreaking and inspiring story of a son's search for the truth behind the myths he was reared with. It is proof that human beings can be scalded by life and yet come through strong, loving, talented and tough - and still know how to laugh." - Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life
"What a book! After 40 years of newspapering - winning prizes as a reporter and foreign correspondent - John Darnton has written a warm personal account of how it all came to be."
- Ben Bradlee, author of A Good Life
"Here is that very rare species of American - the foreign correspondent - speaking from the heart. The result is exciting, magnetic, moving, and a damn good story." - Alan Furst, author of Spies of the Balkans
"I've read a lot of journalists' memoirs and John Darnton's Almost A Family is so far superior to all of them that it's in a class by itself." - Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War
This information about Almost a Family was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Darnton has worked for The New York Times for forty years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent. He is the recipient of two George Polk Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of five novels, including The Darwin Conspiracy and the best seller, Neanderthal. He lives in New York City.
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