Synopses & Reviews
In 1998, a man probing France's Argonne Forest with a metal detector discovered a gold onyx ring. On the inside was the inscription "From Mayor Frank Hague to Sheriff Teddy Fleming, 1945," which helped track down the owner, historian and novelist Thomas Fleming. Thirty years earlier, he had lost the ring while exploring the blood-soaked battlefield where his father had won a lieutenant's commission in World War I. Fleming flew to France and had the ring placed back on his finger, in the exact place where he had lost it.
Back home, Fleming realized it would take more than a trip to France to understand the man who had originally accepted that ring and the mayor who had given it to him. Teddy Fleming represented something large and formidable that the writer had tried to deal with in a half dozen novels. Was it finally time to confront the whole truth without the disguises of fiction?
In Mysteries of My Father, we watch Teddy Fleming rise in Frank Hague's bare-knuckled Irish-American political machine, which dominated Jersey City and the state of New Jersey for thirty-two years. Thomas Fleming tells both the public and the private storiessuch as his parents' violent quarrels, his mother's shame at being Irish, and her embittered attempts to make her son an antagonist against the man she publicly admired and privately disdained.
Again and again, the son found himself baffled by his discoveries about his father, including the heartbreaking poem "My Buddy" that this tough laconic man hung on his bedroom wall and "The Guy in the Glass," hidden in his bureau drawer, about how every man "in his struggle for self" must somehow keep his self-respect. At the heart of the drama is a riveting cry that the sixteen-year-old son elicited from Teddy Fleming when he said he did not love him: "You and your brother. You're all I've got."
From Ireland's County Mayo to Jersey City's City Hall, Fleming's gripping narrative encapsulates the pride and the pain of being Irish in the first decades of the twentieth century. More than a history of the Irish in America, more than a family saga, Mysteries of My Father opens your heart to a son's struggle to survive and ultimately heal his wounds through hard-won understanding and love.
Review
"
Mysteries of My Father is a rich book. Rich in Fleming’s textured description of Jersey City politics. Rich in wonderful personal anecdotes (Frank Hague’s last hurrah on a platform amid the surging, rebellious voters of the Second Ward is the stuff of epic poetry). Rich in sympathetic understanding of Teddy and Kitty and of their tempestuous marriage. Rich in honest evocation of ‘the morally grey world of Hudson County politics.’ And rich in its power to bring alive the once vital, now vanished world of the big-city Irish-American political machine… A moving, masterly, forgiving remembrance." (
Commonwealth Magazine)
Although a paternal portrait may be his primary aim, Thomas Fleming's subtitle promises, more broadly, "an Irish-American memoir." For some of us, that's a worrisome vow, portending crapulous fathers who imbibe paychecks, pious wives who berate husbands for same and hordes of children wailing in squalor. True to form, the late-19th-century Jersey City to which Mr. Fleming's grandparents migrated was home to these auld Gaelic clichés. What adds the American to the Irish in this story, though, is its celebration not merely of stumbling and wallowing but of rebelling and ruling.
Following an eminent career as a writer of both history and fiction, Mr. Fleming has gone rummaging in his own family archives to produce Mysteries of My Father, a memoir of his father's fight to emerge from corrupting poverty with some part of his soul unbruised. And quite a scrap it was.
From his earliest (if never exactly tender) years, Teddy Fleming slugged his way out of obligations and into opportunities. One of his earliest bouts involved menacing a schoolmate into serving as his proxy for mandatory weekday Mass so that Teddy could earn money for his family as a newsie in Manhattan, a situation he had to secure and maintain with yet more hand-to-hand persuasion. As he matured, Fleming the elder punched, shoved and occasionally even boxed his way through the ranks of the 312th Regiment in World War I and the Jersey City Democratic organization during the Depression.
The civilizing influence of the author's mother, Kitty Dolan, went a long way toward keeping the Fleming household free from alcohol, domestic violence and lawless grammar. Eventually, though, her Catholic aspirations to Protestant gentility and heavy-handed elocution lessons failed to soothe her brute of a husband. In fact, the rigorous application of her snobbery to his rough patches wore away only the affection from their marriage, leaving bare an estrangement that was -- and continues to be -- a source of anguish for the author.
Teddy Fleming enjoyed many decades as the muscle in Mayor Frank Hague's Jersey City machine but, at the end, his triumphs withered. Following Kitty's "unconscious suicide," in which she ignored obvious warnings of breast cancer until she succumbed to it, Teddy Fleming lost his political puissance and, ultimately, all the strength he once possessed to continue his contest with life.
Teddy's son eventually left Jersey City to traverse the broad atlas of American history in more than a dozen books (e.g., "Liberty! The American Revolution," "Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America" and "The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I"). His talent for capturing the details of social and political history shines through in this memoir, particularly in the passages that give context to Teddy Fleming's rise to leader of the Sixth Ward, chairman of the Board of Chosen Freeholders, judge of the Second Criminal Court and sheriff of Hudson County. On these pages, Mr. Fleming evokes Edmund Morris's portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's political apprenticeship in "Theodore Rex."
Occasionally, though, when the focus constricts to the personal, one wonders whether Mr. Fleming labors under an excess of intimacy with his subject. For while the vigor of his father's escape from poverty is undeniable, its morality is less obvious. Mr. Fleming readily acknowledges the rules and noses that his father bent along the way, but he too easily pardons his father's actions as simply choices made "within the confines of his harsh world."
No doubt Jersey City then was harsh, for many of its citizens. But something ominous lurks behind the landslide victories that Teddy Fleming engineered in his Sixth Ward while other Democrats across the city suffered losses. When the political opposition does at last prevail and begins picking through the remnants of his father's political career, Thomas Fleming dismisses the "marvelous righteousness" of their probes.
Still, the book's home-grown anecdotes are often as charming as they are ethically -- and, at times, ethnically -- precarious. Take, for instance, the time a Tammany boss rewarded Mr. Fleming's grandfather for civic illegalities with an haute meal in Brooklyn. For Dave Fleming, repasts of several courses were unfamiliar and not terribly appetizing. After struggling through soup and salad, he drew the line at lobster. "I drank your hot wather and I aate yer grass. But I'll be damned if I'll aate that bug!"
Perhaps what makes this story Irish-American is not, as Mr. Fleming suggests, the promise of an unhappy ending -- that's what makes it Irish -- but rather the way it culminates in the author himself, a man who has achieved so much success so few generations removed from the famished destitution that first brought his family to this country. (Wall Street Journal , July 20, 2005)
"Thomas Fleming has finally produced his masterpiece." (Irish America)
Inspired by the discovery of a ring once worn by his father during World War I, historian and novelist Fleming (The Officers' Wives) chronicles three generations of his Irish American family in early 20th-century Jersey City, NJ. The narrative alternates between the families of Fleming's father and mother, both of whom had lower-class Irish American beginnings. His father, Teddy, rose to prominence as a sheriff under the reign of corrupt political boss Frank Hague, while his mother, Kitty, raised two sons and remained devoted to her husband, even after their love deteriorated. By uniting these two strands of personal history, Fleming's story transcends traditional memoir and becomes a moving examination of the unique challenges faced by 20th-century Irish Americans as they struggled to integrate into American society. The constant rift between Catholics and Protestants, survival in the midst of crippling poverty, the significance of education, and the deep, persistent bonds of family are key themes here. Recommended for large public and academic collections.—Ben Bruton, Murray, KY (Library Journal, May 1, 2005)
We were always a confessional people, we Irish, but only as long as the listener was a priest in the box or a pal nodding after a night of knocking back pints. We didn't tell every Tom, Dick or Mick our troubles. It wasn't done.
Historians and scholars may pull me up short on this, but it seems to me that until recently, perhaps the last 30 years or so, there was a great paucity of memoir in the Irish and Irish-American world. Keep your troubles behind the lace curtain, darling, or the neighbors will be talking. There was Eugene O'Neill, of course, but he was an aberration.
It's changing. The Irish-Americans are looking back and getting it down on paper. They're a different breed, the Irish-Americans, not to be confused with the Irish Back Home.
You'll discover those differences in Thomas Fleming's majestic new book, Mysteries of My Father, a book in which there are enough plots and themes for a dozen novels. There is the marriage of Fleming's father, Teddy, to his mother, Kitty. They are a classic, almost stereotypical, pair: he the ill-educated tough ward politician aware of his shortcomings, she the gentle, well-educated beauty with social aspirations.
You may not have much patience with Kitty. She despises Teddy's political world, especially the man at the top in Jersey City, Frank Hague. She simply doesn't understand that, for many Irish in those days, that was the way you had to go. You helped your own, you found them jobs, you made sure they voted and you rewarded them. You made your way with your fists.
No, Kitty didn't understand. She looked along other avenues and saw "the quality" secure in their snobbery. That was the family tragedy, though the tragedy was mostly Teddy's.
What an extraordinary man-tough enough, brave enough, smart enough to earn a battlefield commission. Personable enough to make an impression on Frank Hague.
The ingredients of this memoir are particularly Irish-American. The setting is Jersey City, then an Irish (American) political powerhouse ruled by Frank Hague. You may think "Ah, yes, the usual Irish political machine," but Fleming dismisses the notion of something well-oiled and running smoothly. What he saw around Frank Hague was essentially a ragtag army of hangers-on and opportunists.
Teddy gives lip service to the church, but his faith goes fist deep. He will bow to monsignors and bishops but it's all political. In families like the Flemings, as in most Irish-American families, it is the women who keep the faith alive.
Irishness is an ingredient of the book, but not as the Irish Back Home would understand it. There is a reference to the Dolan family (Kitty was a Dolan) and their relationship with the Old Country. "Seldom if ever was Ireland mentioned in the Dolan household as a source of anger and sorrow. To Tom Dolan, the mother country was not even a memory.... Instead, the Dolans felt a subtle discomfort about their Irish Catholic name in mostly Protestant uptown Jersey City."
This book is mainly a chronicle of love-repressed, frustrated, lost, finally exploding, as Thomas Fleming leads us skillfully from the first breathless moments between Teddy and Kitty through the deterioration of their marriage to a later time when the son begins to understand his father's volcanic love.
Andrew Greeley once wrote of a scholar going to Washington looking for funds to introduce courses on the Irish-American experience. The Washington official said, "No. The Irish don't count anymore."
Not on the political scene, perhaps, but watch out for an Irish-American literature that digs deep, a literature with Thomas Fleming as standard bearer. This, for the historian, novelist and playwright, is still, I think, virgin territory. There's gold here. —Frank McCourt (Publishers Weekly, February 28, 2005)
Review
"A truly moving story of a life-long duel between father and son, Mysteries of My Father will become embedded in your memory. There will be reviewers who will call this an Irish-American story, but Thomas Fleming has given us one of the most uniquely American memoirs I have ever read. He brings us through the process of American social integration, not only of ethnic assimilation, but also of that wondrous travel from economic despair to that certain stability that comes with education and the hard work of determination.
But, this memoir also vibrates with the great good humor that grows out of ward politics, and pulses with the heartfelt drama of a family just getting by. There were some bad times in the Fleming family story, but Tom Fleming prevails to the good times, and the best time is left to the reader. What a wonderful time I had reading this book."
--Dennis Smith, author of Report from Engine Co. 82 and Report from Ground Zero
"With a historian's fidelity and a poet's empathy, Tom Fleming has created a textured study of three generations of Irish Americans, whose clashing spiritual values inform their integration into New Jersey's social and political hierarchy. Mysteries of My Father is an American classic achieved by a master story teller's talents for exploring the tensions and bonds between a father and his sons. Among the literary wonders of this brisk and moving memoir is the father's emergence as a seminal American character -- brusque and pragmatic, yet capable of expected tenderness to his sons."
--Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son
"A well-written, fascinating political history."
--Margaret Truman
"If you care about what it means to be an Irish-American, or about New Jersey political history, or about the relationships between fathers and sons, or about wonderful writing, run -- don't walk -- out to buy Tom Fleming's Mysteries of My Father."
--Nick Acocella, publisher of Politifax
"With Memories of My Father Tom Fleming clinches for himself the undisputed title of Historian-as-Storyteller Extraordinaire. This book is not only a history of three generations of an Irish-American family, it is a story of fathers and sons, the Irish in America, World War I, and the Jersey City of political boss Frank Hague. Fleming tells it like it was – unvarnished accounts of two-fisted politics, the complex influence of the Catholic Church, resentment against the WASP establishment for past discrimination, and how the Irish came to rule a city and a state -- with a vengeance."
--David S. Cohen, Ph.D., Director, Ethnic History Program, New Jersey Historical Commission
"Thomas Fleming's richly-recalled, compelling, multi-generational family chronicle--including the story of his stormy but loving relationship with a colorful father--is as poignant and beguiling as a superb novel."
-- Neil Hickey, Contributing Editor, Columbia Journalism Review
"Tom Fleming’s moving memoir of his father, Teddy, stands alone as a portrait of a man seeking the path to the American dream in the midst of the big city politics of the first half of the twentieth century. Fiercely loyal to Boss Frank Hague, Teddy is confronted along the way with the loss of his wife’s love, and the danger of losing the affection of his sons as well. No storybook ending here, only understanding. The writing is so true to life that I came away having felt part of this story."
--Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University, author of The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping
"A poignant recollection of family, politics, and power that combines the pains of memory to reach the passions of perception. A superb narrative, an absorbing read."
--John Patrick Diggins, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center, CUNY
"Thomas Fleming gives us an unforgetable story about an immigrant family -- his family -- as it struggles to find a place in the American century. He shares with us the dreams and heartaches of his parents, and, in the end, he reminds us of the mysterious and forgiving power of love."
--Terry Golway, author The Irish In America
"Thomas Fleming's Mysteries of My Father is a remarkable book, fascinating as social and political history, and deeply moving as the brutally honest and touchingly told story of one American family. This is the story of what it was like to grow up in the rough-and-tumble world of Jersey City politics as the son of one of its principal leaders during the reign of the legendary Frank 'Boss' Hague, but it is far more than that. The reader goes to the battlefields of the First World War with Fleming's tough and heroic father, and gains painful insight into the intellectual and social ambitions of his sensitive mother, who loved his father but could never accept the consuming life of ward politics in which he moved and thrived. The Fleming clan was filled with colorful, complicated characters who lived their desperate lives with great and often tragic intensity.
Within this crucible, young Fleming meets, survives, and finally triumphs over competing challenges and emotional demands to become the fine writer that so many readers know today. This has to have been a hard book to write, but the reader walks in the presence of a man who in his quest for identity sees, understands, resolves, forgives, and frequently makes the reader laugh. A greatly rewarding book to read, Mysteries of My Father transcends its time and place: it is hard to imagine a more interesting, honest, vivid account of a family than this one is."
--Charles Bracelen Flood, New York Times bestselling historian, biographer and novelist.
"Mysteries of My Father is a classic memoir: The story of one family, set in a larger historical framework - Frank Hague's ruthless political fiefdom in Jersey City. Thomas Fleming writers about his parents' unraveling marriage with tenderness and with fierce honesty."
--William Zinsser, author of Writing About Your Life
"Thomas Fleming's Mysteries of My Father is a remarkable book, fascinating as social and political history, and deeply moving as the brutally honest and touchingly told story of one American family. This is the story of what it was like to grow up in the rough-and-tumble world of Jersey City politics as the son of one of its principal leaders during the reign of the legendary Frank 'Boss' Hague, but it is far more than that. The reader goes to the battlefields of the First World War with Fleming's tough and heroic father, and gains painful insight into the intellectual and social ambitions of his sensitive mother, who loved his father but could never accept the consuming life of ward politics in which he moved and thrived. The Fleming clan was filled with colorful, complicated characters who lived their desperate lives with great and often tragic intensity.
"Within this crucible, young Fleming meets, survives, and finally triumphs over competing challenges and emotional demands to become the fine writer that so many readers know today. This has to have been a hard book to write, but the reader walks in the presence of a man who in his quest for identity sees, understands, resolves, forgives, and frequently makes the reader laugh. A greatly rewarding book to read, Mysteries of My Father transcends its time and place: it is hard to imagine a more interesting, honest, vivid account of a family than this one is."
--Charles Bracelen Flood, New York Times bestselling historian, biographer and novelist.
Review
* ""
Mysteries of My Father is a rich book. Rich in Flemings textured description of Jersey City politics. Rich in wonderful personal anecdotes (Frank Hagues last hurrah on a platform amid the surging, rebellious voters of the Second Ward is the stuff of epic poetry). Rich in sympathetic understanding of Teddy and Kitty and of their tempestuous marriage. Rich in honest evocation of ‘the morally grey world of Hudson County politics. And rich in its power to bring alive the once vital, now vanished world of the big-city Irish-American political machine… A moving, masterly, forgiving remembrance."" (
Commonwealth Magazine)
Although a paternal portrait may be his primary aim, Thomas Fleming's subtitle promises, more broadly, ""an Irish-American memoir."" For some of us, that's a worrisome vow, portending crapulous fathers who imbibe paychecks, pious wives who berate husbands for same and hordes of children wailing in squalor. True to form, the late-19th-century Jersey City to which Mr. Fleming's grandparents migrated was home to these auld Gaelic clichés. What adds the American to the Irish in this story, though, is its celebration not merely of stumbling and wallowing but of rebelling and ruling.
Following an eminent career as a writer of both history and fiction, Mr. Fleming has gone rummaging in his own family archives to produce Mysteries of My Father, a memoir of his father's fight to emerge from corrupting poverty with some part of his soul unbruised. And quite a scrap it was.
From his earliest (if never exactly tender) years, Teddy Fleming slugged his way out of obligations and into opportunities. One of his earliest bouts involved menacing a schoolmate into serving as his proxy for mandatory weekday Mass so that Teddy could earn money for his family as a newsie in Manhattan, a situation he had to secure and maintain with yet more hand-to-hand persuasion. As he matured, Fleming the elder punched, shoved and occasionally even boxed his way through the ranks of the 312th Regiment in World War I and the Jersey City Democratic organization during the Depression.
The civilizing influence of the author's mother, Kitty Dolan, went a long way toward keeping the Fleming household free from alcohol, domestic violence and lawless grammar. Eventually, though, her Catholic aspirations to Protestant gentility and heavy-handed elocution lessons failed to soothe her brute of a husband. In fact, the rigorous application of her snobbery to his rough patches wore away only the affection from their marriage, leaving bare an estrangement that was -- and continues to be -- a source of anguish for the author.
Teddy Fleming enjoyed many decades as the muscle in Mayor Frank Hague's Jersey City machine but, at the end, his triumphs withered. Following Kitty's ""unconscious suicide,"" in which she ignored obvious warnings of breast cancer until she succumbed to it, Teddy Fleming lost his political puissance and, ultimately, all the strength he once possessed to continue his contest with life.
Teddy's son eventually left Jersey City to traverse the broad atlas of American history in more than a dozen books (e.g., ""Liberty! The American Revolution,"" ""Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America"" and ""The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I""). His talent for capturing the details of social and political history shines through in this memoir, particularly in the passages that give context to Teddy Fleming's rise to leader of the Sixth Ward, chairman of the Board of Chosen Freeholders, judge of the Second Criminal Court and sheriff of Hudson County. On these pages, Mr. Fleming evokes Edmund Morris's portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's political apprenticeship in ""Theodore Rex.""
Occasionally, though, when the focus constricts to the personal, one wonders whether Mr. Fleming labors under an excess of intimacy with his subject. For while the vigor of his father
Synopsis
A son comes of age in a fiercely political world
""Thomas Fleming gives us an unforgettable story about an immigrant family--his family--as it struggles to find a place in the American century. He shares with us the dreams and heartaches of his parents, and, in the end, he reminds us of the mysterious and forgiving power of love.""
--Terry Golway, author of The Irish in America
""A truly moving story of a lifelong duel between father and son, Mysteries of My Father also vibrates with the great good humor that grows out of ward politics, and pulses with the heartfelt drama of a family just getting by. There were some bad times in the Fleming family story, but Tom Fleming prevails to the good times, and the best time is left to the reader. What a wonderful time I had reading this book.""
--Dennis Smith, author of the Report from Engine Co. 82 and Report from Ground Zero
""A well-written, fascinating political history.""
--Margaret Truman, author of Murder at Union Station
""With a historian's fidelity and a poet's empathy, Tom Fleming has created a textured study of three generations of Irish-Americans, whose clashing spiritual values inform their integration into New Jersey's social and political hierarchy. Mysteries of My Father is an American classic achieved by a master storyteller's talents for exploring the tensions and bonds between a father and his sons. Among the literary wonders of this brisk and moving memoir is the father's emergence as a seminal American character--brusque and pragmatic, yet capable of expected tenderness to his sons.""
--Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son
""If you care about what it means to be an Irish-American, or about New Jersey political history, or about the relationships between fathers and sons, or about wonderful writing, run--don't walk--out to buy Tom Fleming's Mysteries of My Father.""
--Nick Acocella, publisher of Politifax
Synopsis
A son comes of age in a fiercely political world
"Thomas Fleming gives us an unforgettable story about an immigrant family--his family--as it struggles to find a place in the American century. He shares with us the dreams and heartaches of his parents, and, in the end, he reminds us of the mysterious and forgiving power of love."
--Terry Golway, author of The Irish in America
"A truly moving story of a lifelong duel between father and son, Mysteries of My Father also vibrates with the great good humor that grows out of ward politics, and pulses with the heartfelt drama of a family just getting by. There were some bad times in the Fleming family story, but Tom Fleming prevails to the good times, and the best time is left to the reader. What a wonderful time I had reading this book."
--Dennis Smith, author of the Report from Engine Co. 82 and Report from Ground Zero
"A well-written, fascinating political history."
--Margaret Truman, author of Murder at Union Station
"With a historian's fidelity and a poet's empathy, Tom Fleming has created a textured study of three generations of Irish-Americans, whose clashing spiritual values inform their integration into New Jersey's social and political hierarchy. Mysteries of My Father is an American classic achieved by a master storyteller's talents for exploring the tensions and bonds between a father and his sons. Among the literary wonders of this brisk and moving memoir is the father's emergence as a seminal American character--brusque and pragmatic, yet capable of expected tenderness to his sons."
--Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son
"If you care about what it means to be an Irish-American, or about New Jersey political history, or about the relationships between fathers and sons, or about wonderful writing, run--don't walk--out to buy Tom Fleming's Mysteries of My Father."
--Nick Acocella, publisher of Politifax
About the Author
THOMAS FLEMING is the author of more than forty novels and nonfiction books, including bestsellers such as The Officers' Wives, Time and Tide, and Liberty! The American Revolution. He is a frequent guest and contributor to NPR, PBS, A&E, and the History Channel. He was the principal commentator on the award-winning PBS documentary The Irish in America: Long Journey Home. A Fellow of the Society of American Historians, Fleming has served as chairman of the American Revolution Round Table and president of the American Center of P.E.N., the international writer's organization. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note.
Acknowledgments.
1. A Message from the Past.
2. The Bad Old Days.
3. An Uptown World.
4. Three Beauties.
5. My Rosary.
6. The Sporting Life.
7. The Escape Artist.
8. Salesman’s Blues.
9. To Europe with Love.
10. You’re in the Army Now.
11. The Limits of Love.
12. Over There.
13. Argonne.
14. Home Is the Hero.
15. The Man in Charge.
16. The Big Win.
17. Sweethearts.
18. The Birth of the Blues.
19. Leader.
20. Two Circles of Love.
21. Street Angel, House Devil.
22. One True Faith.
23. I Can’t Live with That Man.
24. All I’ve Got.
25. The Guy in the Glass.
26. You’re in the Navy Now.
27. Swabbie.
28. What’s Philosophy?
29. Decline and Fall.
30. Heartbreak House.
31. The Last Lesson.
32. Hail and Farewell.
Index.