Timeless

June 30, 2014
In this wondrously moving work, journalist Franks (My Father’s Secret War) explores her improbable love affair and 36-year marriage with longtime Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Bursting out of her repressed childhood in Wellesley, Mass., and radicalized by the Vietnam War, Franks became one of the few female journalists at United Press International, co-winning a Pulitzer Prize at age 24 for her sympathetic coverage of the Weathermen’s Diana Oughton. Morgenthau, a widower more than 30 years her senior with five children from his previous marriage, represented the generation of her parents: he was a WWII veteran, the son of F.D.R.’s treasury secretary, and a powerful attorney in New York City, first elected as district attorney in 1974. Yet the chasm of differences that separated the two actually fueled their partnership. Morgenthau got Franks hired as a reporter for the New York Times, thus allowing him to suggest sources and leak stories to the press through her, and, once married, the two often thought through his cases together (such as role-playing the Bernard Goetz positions). Franks writes passionately of this “love of two eccentrics”—she brandishing spontaneity and craving self-assurance, he rather self-contained and diffident—in her rather miraculous story of a transcendent love that is imperiled only by the specter of mortality.

July 15, 2014
Portrait of the enduring romance between Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Franks and long-serving New York County district attorney Robert Morgenthau.Franks (My Father's Secret War: A Memoir, 2007, etc.) looks back on her life and marriage to the much older Morgenthau with focus and candor, and she endeavors to "talk about the personal life that he has kept so private during his forty-five years as a public figure." The author first depicts their mutual attraction against the tumult of 1970s New York City, which had driven the rebellious, feminist Franks to become a Times reporter: "I ended up deciding not to join the Weathermen and to write its story instead." Yet, she scandalized her fellow leftists in 1976 by dating Morgenthau, a low-key yet powerful establishment scion (his father was a prominent Franklin Roosevelt adviser, and he'd served heroically in World War II, as had her own father) who enjoyed public approval and a reputation for rectitude during a chaotic, high-crime era. Once they married, Franks contended with Morgenthau's difficulty in moving past his revered first wife, who died following a painful bout with cancer. She also struggled to move her writing forward despite the duties of a "society wife," though she continued to pursue prominent projects, such as her controversial interview with Hillary Clinton following the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Franks' chiseled prose demonstrates her chops as a veteran journalist, although the narrative slackens somewhat as the couple settles into domesticity and Morgenthau continues to score high-profile legal victories. They encountered rough patches and periods of quarrel but also successfully raised two children in addition to Morgenthau's earlier family. Ultimately, they always returned to a state of marital grace: "I rather envied Bob's ability to start every moment anew, as though the present were the future and the past never happened."The boldface names give the book curb appeal, but this memoir's hidden strength is its testimony to the beauty and difficulty of a long-term marriage.

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August 1, 2014
Franks was a 26-year old, Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter for UPI when she met 53-year-old New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, a potential source for a story she was writing. They couldn't have been more opposite. She was a radical who'd won her Pulitzer for reporting on a member of the Weathermen with whom she identified. He was the straitlaced legal enforcer for the establishment. Yet they discovered they had much in common, as both were bright, passionate, and iconoclastic. Would that be enough to sustain their relationship against all odds and vehement protests from friends and family on both sides? Franks, a former staff writer with the New York Times, writes lovingly of their 35-year marriage, offering a tender portrait of devotion. At the same time, she reveals many behind-the-scenes details of Morgenthau's famous cases, including those of the subway vigilante, white-collar crime on Wall Street, and the CIA dismissal of evidence of a growing terrorist cell in New York. This is an intimate and revealing look at a high-profile couple, nurturing and supporting each other in a swirl of New York politics, media, marriage, and family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2014

Not every story of a marriage is as interesting as this one. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Franks has maintained radical beliefs since her college hippie days, having broken laws by doing things like bloodying draft files. Her husband, the renowned former New York County district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, could have put her in jail. Instead, for 35 years, they've had the intensely close marital union revealed here. Franks also discusses pertinent cases from Morgenthau's files, including his discovery of a terrorist cell that eventually became al-Qaeda headquarters. Too bad the CIA didn't believe him.

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