Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me

by Lucinda Franks

An intimate look at one of New York’s most defiant, iconoclastic couples, and the trials and successes of their marriage


To say that Robert Morgenthau and Lucinda Franks are opposites feels like an understatement. She’s a radical, self-styled hippie, and he is New York’s famous district attorney, a legal luminary of the establishment; she’s a prizewinning New York Times journalist who has chained herself to fences, bloodied draft files, and otherwise broken the law for her beliefs, and he is a secret iconoclast who could have put her in jail.
     Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me is the memoir of their triumph against the odds, their ongoing thirty-five-year marriage, a union between two people so deeply in love but so different—and with so many decades separating them—that their family and friends fought to keep them apart.
     Franks offers a confidential tour of their marriage, as well as the never-revealed, behind-the-scenes details of Morgenthau’s famous cases. We see a red-faced Ronald Lauder storm into Morgenthau’s office after the DA seizes a priceless Egon Schiele painting from the walls of the Museum of Modern Art; we witness the CIA dismissing Morgenthau’s discovery of the growing terrorist cell in New York that would become al-Qaeda headquarters. This is an unusually close look at the privates lives of two well-known people who have always refused to reveal themselves to the public.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

400 pages, Hardcover

First published August 19, 2014

About the author

My new book, which will be released in August, is called 'Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me.' It's an intimate memoir about my husband, Robert Morgenthau, NY's former DA for 35 years, and me; the successes, trials, adventures, both traumatic and hilarious, of our marriage. It also gives inside information about my husband's most famous cases - The Central Park Jogger, Astor Elder Abuse, BCCI, Tyco, Goetz and others. It has gotten some wonderful reviews from prominent writers. It's available on Amazon for pre-ordering.
I am the author of four books: 'My Father's Secret War: A Memoir', 'Wild Apples': a novel, and 'Waiting Out A War: The exile of John Picciano.'
I am also a journalist who was on the staff of The New York Times, and have written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, The Daily Beast and other publications.

I have two children with my husband, five stepchildren, a little puffy white dog, and a couple of cats who come visiting from my daughters' apartment nearby.
My husband, after his retirement as DA, still works - he is at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz law firm - and writes Op Ed pieces on the persecution of immigrants and the desperate need for treatment of soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He has gone from being an objective prosecutor to being a passionate crusader. It is great to see him flourish at such an advanced age in his second career.
But Bob is a farmer at heart, and we love to go up to our apple orchards and vegetable farm in the lower Hudson valley, which our son Josh, 30, has made into an organic enterprise. At Fishkill Farms, there are new free range chickens, and at the big farm store, fresh pressed cider and other natural and homemade foods.

Reviews

[Sarah Glass · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm in a bad mood about the world, and I'm going to take it out on this book. I picked this up at random and made it about halfway through, and I cannot stand this woman. I was initially intrigued by the mixture of politics and relationship observations, but I can't handle her nauseating faux-radicalism. She loves to expound on her formative days as an anti-racist, anti-war, anti-capitalist activist, and her supposed angst at assimilating into the establishment through journalism. However, it becomes quickly apparent that she is in fact herself racist, colonial, and ready to sell out her beliefs at the first opportunity. She describes Bob's family's Jamaican maid, Renia, with offensive stereotypes, describing herself as "her new mistress" with apparently zero irony. She twists a momentary encounter with a Bedouin man into a host of projections onto his ~rough and ancient~ lifestyle, imagining he lives as Jesus did 2000 years ago, and wishing she could bring him back just to look at his exotic appearance. She is rabidly pro-Israel, with the words "Arab" and "Palestinian" only appearing as qualifiers for "terrorists", seeming to completely abandon her Pulitzer-prize-winning journalistic skills when it comes to any real analysis of the situation. The fact that her Jewish friends do not support Israel doesn't tip her off - she demeans them as self-hating (though not even Jewish herself). It doesn't seem like her radical beliefs were ever particularly genuine - they were a way to cast off her stifling white, middle class upbringing, and she casts them off in turn once she finds a new adventure among the wealthy political elite. This is perhaps best illustrated by the anecdote where she attends an anti-nuclear protest after a conflict with Bob's family, even though she has by now disavowed any form of protest and radicalism as naive and destructive, just to make a point and have a bit of fun. And yet, when she faces arrest at the protest, she doesn't have the guts, though she used to love getting arrested - now that she's marrying an attorney, she can't risk his reputation! Even though the radicals she came up with are apparently now the real fascists, she says "I needed to feel the warmth of people who forgave me for leaving them and remained loyal and kind". Which is it? It's all about her, except when it's about Bob, her father-husband (and yes, the father comparison is her own, not mine), whom she mythologizes endlessly. Spare me.

Addendum - apparently the author died this month, so maybe I should be more kind. But that doesn't change the fact that I regularly found myself whispering "fuck you" as I read this book.

[Geri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a love story. And more. Lucinda Franks has written a close, warm and lovely book, and it is about her life with her husband, and she is, and we become enchanted with this history. She is a journalist so be prepared for insight and her world of warts and wealth. Although I think she wrote this book to bring the reader close to her husband, and his long legacy of service to the country, it is her voice that captures and entices; and she tells the story of marriage, as much as it is the story of her marriage.

[Susy Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because my book club selected it. I used 3 out of the 4 renewal options from our local library to get through this book. I thought about quitting many times, but I persevered and made it to the end. I feel like I birthed a baby, without the bundle of joy to show for it. I 'think' I'm glad I read it, as with any book I can also garner something from it. And I appreciate most any story, especially when someone puts their life story out for everyone to read. Gutsy.

This book had a few redeeming qualities; some personal stories with famous people were interesting, the inside scoop on some political things was eye opening (if true), but their individual personalities and shard love was...odd. I just can't wrap my head around the age difference they have, and how marital love works with such a gap. Call me old fashioned. I am happy for them that Bob has lived so long so they have had many years together. There is the saving grace.

I felt like Franks spent most of the book telling their love story yet in the end she wraps it up by showing just how different they really are and all they've had to do to be together. It was almost a dissertation on why they should never have been together. Not the ending I would have chosen. Again, thank goodness I can move on to a new story.

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really really liked Franks' book My Father's Secret War: A Memoir. So, it was very disappointing to find Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me is an uninteresting book about two people with very interesting careers who lived during very eventful times. I'm not sure how she managed to write such a dull book. I was curious about Morgenthau's lengthy term as NY County DA as well as his earlier life. I'm still curious and will look elsewhere as there was very little of anything in this book, and I found myself skimming for highlights.

[Judi Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

How fortunate for us that Robert Morgenthau, a man who led such an amazing life, married a writer. Lucinda Franks shares her memories of her marriage to a World icon as well as descriptions of his relationships and of course his MANY accomplishments as Manhattan District Attorney. She shares memories of her childhood, marriage to a man 30 years her senior, blending two families and two high powered careers. Her writing is beautiful. Although memoirs can be self-serving, Franks chronicles a life well lived.

[Maryanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, skimmed. This book had a great review somewhere, hence its addition to my list to read. Lucinda Frank got a start writing about one of the Weathermen, the radical group from the 70's, and won the Pulitzer at a very early age for this. This is a memoir, but I found the "I" word a bit too often for my taste, the depictions of their May-December romance just too much, too.

[Falene · Rating 1 out of 5]

She's a bit full of herself

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a perfect title for this memoir! Lucinda Franks pieces together the best and most meaningful memories of her life with Robert Morgenthau, and invites us into her home to celebrate. I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this heartfelt May-December love story.

[Carolyn Hecht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good book!

Loved it. Learned so much. Expanded my soul. Highly recommend. Beautifully, skillfully written. Kol ha k’vod. Lives lived large; with honesty, integrity, respect, and most of all, love.

[Linda Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Presently I am on a book tour for my book, Love Cycles, The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love and found this book while looking for something to read in a hotel room with hours to pass. I so wish I had read it while writing my book, Lucinda's love story is an enactment of everything I write about. We often think of "love" as that first stage, mediated by hormones, chemicals and a fantasy projection of soulmate on the other person. But Wholehearted Love comes after many cycles and seasons of resilience and staying with it. (and thunderstorms, icy mornings and occasional lightening) Someone asked me in an interview which kind of couples (compatibility wise) had the best chances of "making it", I said that while similarity and the obvious kinds of compatability are important; even more important is a mysterious ingredient which I heard someone once call a "primal fingerprint". In this kind of relationship the differences in lifestyle, age, politics can be glaringly impossible but there is something else, a knowing, a primal fingerprint that says "Yes", and these are the gems of love. Lucinda Franks describes this with such open honesty, her own wonderment that this actually happened and became her life is riveting, and the courage of both of them to follow fills me with awe. If anyone reading my book wants a living example of the journey from Merging to Wholehearted Loving, read Timeless Love, Morgenthau, and Me. Thank you Lucinda, for realness, rawness and inspiration. This is a real winner.

[Mukeary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in less than a week after reading its review in Sunday's NYTimes Book Review Section. It is a remarkable book: well written, with just-enough information on the crimes Robert Morgenthau prosecuted in his l-o-n-g tenure as DA of New York. However, the most compelling part of the book is the author's seemingly candid discussion of her marriage to her 35-years-older-than-she-husband. It seemed to me that it took her an awfully long time to come to the (accurate) conclusion she did about marriage...but come to them she did. I'll probably re-read this.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Morgenthau and Lucinda Franks are opposites. She’s a radical, self-styled hippie, and he is New York’s famous district attorney; she’s a prizewinning New York Times journalist who has chained herself to fences, bloodied draft files, and broken the law for her beliefs, and he is a iconoclast who could have put her in jail. Franks offers a confidential tour of their marriage, as well as details of Morgenthau’s famous cases. An interesting read, but long and sometimes self serving.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted it to be more about him but it always came back to her. He was a legal giant who did great things for the country and NY. She paints herself as solving 9/11 which is somewhat far fetched. In the final pages she gets to their relationship and how we all believe we need to know much more than we need to to make one work.

[Madge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this love story. Regardless of a huge age difference it worked. Dynamics change as years go on. She wanted a father figure who would take care of her. As the book goes on you see two amazing people work together and how Lucinda changes and grows up to continuing her career and becoming a mother too. It stands the test of time.

[Chris Moyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much to like about this book, a love story, a bit of WWII, unique view of a marriage where the participants are 30 years apart in age, interesting insight into the Manhattan DA's office and insiders info on the likes of the Kennedys. All beautifully written and so interesting.

[Marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any book that acknowledges and credits William (Bill) Gifford must be good. And it was.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Franks is a great writer--very touching portrait of a happy but unlikely union.

[Rosanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great memoir. Learned a great deal about Bob Morgenthau and Lucinda Franks. But in its heart, this is truly a love story, more specifically, a love letter from Lucinda to Bob.