The Family Snitch: A Daughter’s Memoir of Truth and Lies

Wall Street Journal reporter Fontana attempts to resolve the “confusion and hurt” caused by her father’s long absences during her childhood in her ruminative debut. When she was a student at the University of Oregon in 2016, Fontana proposed “a journalistic examination of [her] father’s criminal past” for her honors thesis, hoping to get at the truth behind the blustery man she saw only on weekends, who went to prison when she was nine for reasons she never knew. Grant money enabled her to fly back to Chicago, where she’d lived before leaving in 2005 with her mother and stepfather. She soon uncovered her father’s involvment in a scheme he hatched with Chicago police to steal money and cocaine from drug dealers. She interviewed attorneys and family members, whose insistence on privacy forms the account’s most interesting tension: between a desire for disclosure and doubt about its worth. Along the way, Fontana thwarts readers’ expectations of a happy ending by noting that she’s permanently estranged from her father and her own marriage ended during the writing of the book. Though her prose is polished, labored metaphors—especially an extended one in which she describes her mind as an office and her memories as files—undercut the narrative’s power somewhat. Still, this is a memorable inquiry into the legacy of a father’s sins. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie McQuilkin & Altman. (Feb.)