Family Secrets Unearthed in The Family Snitch

[1:49]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. I interviewed Francesca Fontana at the totally booked live event at the Whitby, and it was right before a big article came out in The Wall Street Journal excerpted from her book. She has been an award winning reporter at The Wall Street Journal for years where she also hosts This Week in Markets, the podcast. The book is called The Family Snitch, Daughter's Memoir of Truth and Lies, which is about her search for meaning in her relationship with her father, who she finds out early on in the book had actually been in prison when she didn't know why he had been away. And she uncovers a lot about not only her father and his family, but about her mother's role and everything. And in so doing, she learns more about who she is as a person. It's really interesting and is also an investigative report as she tears through research and documents and tries to find the answer to who she is. In terms of bio, Francesca is a graduate of the University of Oregon's Clark Honors College. And in 2020, she received a front page award for the News Women's Club of New York. This is her first book, and Franchesca lives in Brooklyn with her cat. Welcome to Totally Booked Live. I am so excited to be here with Franchesca Fontana, The A Daughter's Memoir of Truth and Lies.

[3:51]Guest: Congratulations on your debut memoir. Thank you very much. Yay. It's very exciting to be here. Thank you for having me. Can we have a round of applause? Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. Doesn't that feel good? It really does. Feels good to Who be doesn't love coming into a room and clapping people? Maybe

[4:09]Zibby Owens: I'll have him do it again. Yeah, I know. Please tell everybody about your book. Absolutely.

[4:15]Guest: So this book is really the story of my search for the truth about my family, specifically my father, Al, who, when I was nine years old, he went to prison, and I never knew why. My mother, who was the primary parent, she didn't know either, and so we ended up moving from our hometown of Chicago, where we all lived, to Oregon, which is about as far away from Chicago as you can get without crossing an ocean. And, you know, I grew up there, kind of estranged from my father, and it was just always this big mystery, this big, you know, hole in my family history of understanding, you know, where I come from. And I thought that it would remain a mystery until I started my career as a journalist, as a young journalist at the University of Oregon. And, you know, it was in my reporting two class that I realized that there's such thing as public records and that with this, you know, all these tools I was accumulating as as a reporter, I could maybe find the answers for myself. And so that's what I did. Went back to Chicago in college and then kept returning for reporting trips, and I met my father as an adult, and I insisted to myself that I was there to do a job. Know, I was there as a reporter. I kept that hat firmly on, and that being his daughter was sort of secondary, as I was really trying to crack this case of how he had ended up in prison, and really behind that, who was he? And it turns out he was this kind of guy who knew a guy in these CD circles of Chicago. And it took me much longer to admit to myself that really what was behind that search was, you know, the fact that I loved my father, and I wanted to know who he really was. And I think that that's the foundation of love in any relationship, but certainly between a parent and a child is you want to be known and you want to know them. And I think that that began to make it more difficult for me as I tried to stay the unemotional, objective reporter. You know, I had to start to reckon with the fact that, like it or not, I was also a daughter in this search, and as I was unraveling who he really was and whether this person that I was meeting, this man, could be someone I could respect, or that's what I hoped, I think, underneath it all, was that I would find, you know, a father that I was capable of loving and I was hoping to, you know, start this new relationship. But early in the search, would I would not admit that to myself. I'd be like, Love? No. This is business.

[7:03]Zibby Owens: This is this is just I just need the facts. So in your search for your father, though, you uncovered a lot about yourself, about your mother, your extended family, the judicial system in general. I was particularly drawn to how vulnerable you were about your own mental health issues Yes. OCD, some of the habits that you had, some of the ways that you coped that fortunately, you know, one professor really helped you through and understood when you couldn't come to class and all that. Can you just share a little bit about that to this room of strangers now Absolutely. That

[7:41]Guest: I'm more than Honestly, happy it's easier than than sometimes your close friends. So I didn't know it when I began the events of this book, but I had always been riddled with fear and anxiety as a child, and later would be diagnosed with OCD. And it was a tricky thing because as a reporter, being obsessive and slightly compulsive is kind of a feature, not a bug. It's actually fact checking something over and over again, a good thing. And so it was hard for me to see until it was right in front of me how detrimental it was becoming because it really The OCD or the fixation, the obsession, I became increasingly preoccupied with the notion of truth, not only in trying to parse out whether my father was lying to me and trying to sell me a bill of goods about his own life, but in whether I could trust any of my own memories of him, you know, and whether I was injecting my own experiences with bias, and I became increasingly obsessive. I guess that's really the best word for it. They nailed it. But it was really the best word, I became obsessive about, I couldn't trust what I perceived. And so, you know, as I saw the writing on the wall of who my father really was, and I was getting, you know, all of the answers I sought, it took a really long time for me to believe it and trust it. I think that it was also wrapped up in something that's probably understandable or defensible, which is that I really didn't want to see that my dad might not be a great guy, and he might not be someone, if I were not born to him, would choose to know. And I I was also, I think, became preoccupied with whether his worst traits or his biggest mistakes were sort of faded to become my own. You know? I think that we all I'm sure we've all said, like, Oh, my God. I'm becoming my mom. You know? Never. Yeah. But so that story, that's like a universal truth, and so mine was like, Oh my gosh, I'm terrified of somehow becoming my father, because I saw how he hurt people and used people, and I was terrified of doing that to others. And so I think that that was something that I'll plug exposure response prevention therapy here. It's fantastic if you're having obsessive thoughts and can't get out of bed because of them. But in addition to getting the help I needed, I think that it was also, you know, my own growing up, you know, doing years of this this, like, cat and mouse game with my father that I realized, not to put it into hyperbolic or dramatic terms, that it was really him or me. I could keep throwing good money after bad trying to, you know, get him to tell the truth and sacrifice my own well-being to a large extent, or I could live a life that was my own, and unfortunately, he just could not have a place in it. That was the place that I ended up really having to stare those two roads down and weigh the collateral damage of each of them.

[11:01]Zibby Owens: So in the book, you alternate first person with some accounts, where you're basically doing research and presenting the case as if you were, you know, a court reporter type of person and introducing us to the cast of characters, and then your father would end up being one of the guys who was doing this, and and then we would go back to you or your breakup or your relationship, and then back to another court case. Tell me a little bit about how you decided to structure the book this way, and

[11:31]Guest: okay. And then I have another question. Great. Great. I'll try to make this one brief. Well, it it I struggled because, you know, in journalism, typically, if you weren't there, you don't you you know, you don't have good primary sourcing, it's difficult to recreate a scene. And memoir is is made of reconstructions of the past, and so I had to sort of create these guardrails for myself as I wrote when I was taking the reader into my father's memories, or what the stories he was calling a memory, or events that all of my reporting showed me of my mother's life. I had to take, not necessarily novelistic liberties, but I really wanted to portray the experience without sacrificing, you know, journalistic rigor. And so really the scaffolding or the the all of the bones behind those delving into the past is all based on this this wealth of reporting I did. But it's not interesting to just read a list of facts. It's really not. And in doing that, I think I really was able to put myself in the room, so to speak, with my parents, you know, in their younger years. And I think that that was sort of the guiding light in terms of how I structured the book. I wanted to make it clear to the reader because my contract with the reader, with you, is very important to me. I wanted you to know that I, you know, I am telling you a story, and I've done my darndest to make sure that it is a true story. But I I wanted to make that explicit, and I and that sort of informed the craft behind it. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[15:58]Zibby Owens: in your search for all the facts about your dad, you end up coming out with this great journalistic piece that you write, and that's on the cover of a section, not the main cover. Mhmm. I I clarified that piece. It in the book. Yes. But a big feature about your dad and the case and everything, and then you talk in the book about the his reaction and the extended family reaction, And now I'm wondering, you wrote this whole book, how is that going over? Well, if if promise not to hold

[16:27]Guest: spoilers against me. So I I no longer have a relationship with my father, and my the his family is large, you know, family with a capital F. They're very large and very tight knit, and there's this sort of Godfather esque mantra that you don't go against the family, you know? And essentially, that's what I've done, whether I like to admit it or not. I am exposing relatively private people, like civilians, to a wider world without their I mean, with their consent, but I'm the one holding the pen, you know, so I wield a lot of power in that way. And so, while I can't speak to what his reaction may be, I can say that, you know, my mother, who I have a very close relationship with, she is my everything, she, you know, has an interesting perspective because she saw firsthand, you know, sort of the toll that writing the book took and writing that piece took, you know, and weighing the collateral damage of what it means to choose to write about others, and, you know, whether you like it or not, there's gonna be fallout. Not everyone will be pleased with, you know, being exposed, and I think that that's something that I've had to It's always weighing heavily on my mind, and I think that I can say that I did my best at every moment when I was interrogating my father or my mother, the choices they made in their past. I couldn't move on without interrogating myself because, you know, that's just part of the deal. If I'm gonna put them under the microscope, I'm gonna put myself under the microscope. Does that does that answer your question? Yeah. And so

[18:12]Zibby Owens: the motivation you came to realize was really the search for love, the search for your father's love and the search for understanding, and yet the book has caused an even bigger rift in a way. Are you still happy with all of your decisions along the way? Yes,

[18:35]Guest: but I'll explain. Yes, because I And I didn't mean to suggest you shouldn't be. Oh, yes. No, of course. It's something that I'm actually really, I like to talk about because the decision to estrange yourself from your parent is never easy, you know? It is, it's a kind of grief, and I think for a long time, I was hesitant to, you know, really make that final cut because, you know, then if it's sort of like Schrodinger's cat or, you know, Schrodinger's box, I'm not sure what it's called, but there's a cat in a box, and it's either dead or alive depending on whether you look into the box, and I'm sure there's, like, math involved, but I don't know that, but really, I kept prolonging the inevitable, which was finishing my search and finishing the book because I would have to open the box and see that there was no road left for my father and I. So I think that having done my grieving for that relationship while everyone is still alive and healthy was a really interesting process. But in finishing the book, I feel that I've I guess, really, when it comes down to it, the thing that I was asking myself as the devil's advocate was, you know, are you writing this book to get back at him in some way? Like, you writing this to because you hate your father? And I thought about that for a good long time, and it the answer is no. I'm not writing this because I hate him or I want him to suffer or I want to get any kind of revenge or any malicious feeling. I wrote it because I loved him, and so really this book is sort of the story of my love for my father, you know, however it ends, however, you know, when you open the box,

[20:18]Zibby Owens: whether it it, you know, is alive or dead. And one last thing that I found so interesting is your own path to becoming a Wall Street Journal reporter, And you detail that as one of the storylines that along the way, despite setbacks and hurdles and everything, you and and despite the fact that you belittle, in a way, your own achievements at times and are like, well, I got this scholarship. It's only because I was at this random school not random school. Said something like this Oh, some random state school that nobody knows, you know, you said. Anyway, and yet you end up at, like, the most one of the most prestigious newspapers as a as a journalist. Can you just explain how that happened and what it's like to

[21:03]Guest: have achieved that? It is something that, you know, I was so fortunate. I joined the journal when I was 22, 23, and I was terrified, which is where all of that impostor syndrome came from. I was kind of trying to steal myself for the inevitable day that someone would come by and be like, You're not supposed to be here, you gotta pack your stuff. Security's on their way, and I'd be like, Of course, of course, you found me. And it took a long time for me to really take pride in my work, and that's still an evolving process even with writing the book. I think I can be quite self critical, but the thing that's easier for me to take pride in, and maybe it's some sort of projection, but in getting to the journal and in crafting this career for myself, I was the first person in my family to go to college, and all my mom told me when I was a kid was like, You're going to college. I didn't, and no one Our parents didn't, but you're going. And it was an inevitability. And she It makes me feel like I've done right by her to have taken all of the love and sacrifice that she put into raising me to show maybe I've made some good on that. And certainly, I To be able to make a living as a writer is a gift,

[22:25]Zibby Owens: and I do not take that for granted for one second. Well, your path to doing it from writing for the small local paper during college to having one professor give you a little bit of encouragement enough that you kept going to just pursuing your dreams. It's really inspiring. It really is. Thank you. And just to close, what do you want people to mostly take away? Like, what should people take back to their own family relationships having learned more about yours? You know, it's something that,

[22:57]Guest: not to plug my excerpt that's coming out in the journal this weekend, but I I write It's in there, but I'll I'll give you a little sneak peek. You know, something that was hard for me was coming to terms with the fact that, yes, I didn't know my father, he was this black box, and I did all this digging, and then I found out who he was. It was harder for me to come to terms with the fact that my mother also kept secrets, and I had to interrogate myself, you know, why didn't I consider her secrets to be lies by omission, you know? And I what I realized is that, you know, while my father was keeping secrets to protect himself and his ego and his sense of, you know, that he could continue being who he is, my mother, every secret she kept about her past was about protecting my future. She didn't want me to grow up knowing what she'd been through because she was afraid that somehow then I would grow up seeing that as a possibility for me. And so coming to terms with the fact that, yes, we all keep secrets. All tell white lies, and that using the capital L word of liar, you know, can be it should be wielded with intention, and I think that I found that really the source of my mother's secrets were loving, and that there are two sides to that, to uncovering your family history.

[24:24]Zibby Owens: And yeah, no, if I talk too much about my mom, I get a little weepy, so yeah. I guess. So if we cover things up for their own good, it's okay. It's kind of okay. It is something that The boomerang will always come back.

[24:39]Guest: It's kind of the lot of the parent, is that one day your child will grow up and they'll wanna know who you were when you weren't being mom or dad. And it's sort of this process that, I mean, can only speak for myself, I'm so grateful that my mother sent me off and was like, I'll see you on the other side. And because everything she did was informed by this very strong sort of unbreakable love that we share, I came back on the other side very happy to see her. And it only strengthened our relationship. So I'm not saying, like, keep secrets from your kids, but I am saying that all of the revelations I've had have only strengthened our

[25:27]Zibby Owens: love. Amazing. Congratulations. Thank you so in the book. The family sitch. Thank you. You. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.