Award-win­ning author Mar­got Singer’s new mem­oir-in-essays, Secret Agent Man, is a pow­er­ful explo­ration of fam­i­ly his­to­ry, mem­o­ry, and the mean­ing of home. The daugh­ter and grand­daugh­ter of Euro­pean Jews dis­placed by the Holo­caust, Singer probes the nature of time and his­to­ry, obscu­ri­ty and clar­i­ty, dis­place­ment and loss. The title essay probes her mem­o­ries of her father — was he or was he not a spy for the Mossad? — as it grap­ples with the rid­dle of whether our par­ents ever are who we imag­ine them to be. The impact of these essays is cumu­la­tive; page by page, they build into a mov­ing exam­i­na­tion of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, desire, artis­tic ambi­tion, and place. 

Secret Agent Man traces Singer’s jour­ney from her child­hood in Boston, grow­ing up with a father ​“who wasn’t like any­body else’s dad,” to her days as a man­age­ment con­sul­tant in New York City, to her mid-life relo­ca­tion to a col­lege town in the heart of the Mid­west. Com­pelling, ques­tion­ing, and yearn­ing, this col­lec­tion com­bines a poet’s engage­ment with lan­guage with the essayist’s inti­mate, reflec­tive voice.