Shelter Island author Junod’s memoir: Stories, shocks and secrets revealed

Tom Junod would have made a great detective. 

His dogged pursuit of clues, characters and connections would have earned him a place among the sleuths immortalized by mystery writers and chroniclers of true crime stories. But to the benefit of readers, he chose, or was compelled, to follow the path to become a writer from an early age.

His new book, “In The Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to be a Man,” which comes out in March, is a stunning memoir that was no doubt painful to write. His search to understand a father who was both irresistibly attractive and fatally destructive spanned decades.

All the while, Mr. Junod built a solid career writing for ESPN, GQ, Esquire, and other major publications, garnering the National Magazine Award twice amid other recognition for works including “The Falling Man” (Esquire, September 2003), “My Father’s Fashion Tips” (GQ, June 2007), and “Can You Say … Hero?” (Esquire, April 1998).

The last, his profile of Fred Rogers, became a movie where Mr. Junod got to see himself played by Matthew Rhys opposite Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. A central theme of the movie is the writer’s fraught relationship with his father.

Becoming close to Mr. Rogers, he was still struggling to make sense of his father, Lou, the person who was so central to who he was himself, to discern where his mother and his family fit into the constellation of Lou Junod’s embraces; to ferret out the truth from clues that were difficult to unearth and those right in front of him.

The stories of his charismatic father in the book at times sound entertaining, but all too often a page is turned to show something seamy and painful. “I wanted to give people the experience of being with this overwhelming presence,” he said, “letting people stay in the scene as much as they could, without being dogmatic or analytical.”  

The stories shine a light not only on his mother and father, family members and colorful characters — not to mention Zsa Zsa Gabor, Cary Grant and other movie stars, some of whom were his father’s dalliances. 

“It’s a book about keeping secrets,” he said.

One cannot read this book without thinking that Mr. Junod must have seriously contemplated not writing it at all, or stopping when it became clear that ugly family truths would be revealed. That doesn’t seem to be in his DNA, which is only partially a play on words. In fact, it was the modern technology of genetic analysis offered by sites like 23andMe, coupled with the decades-old records traceable through Ancestry, that helped answer many of his questions. Seemingly hopeless searches of bureaucratic records, census rolls and microfilms in dusty corners of the New York Public Library paid off slowly but surely.

Improbably, incredibly, his family’s lives intersected with more than one lurid crime story that made tabloid headlines in New York City, and Florida as well. 

“It’s a terrific book,” said Islander Robert Lipsyte, himself an award-winning writer and Reporter columnist. He described it as a “wonderfully nuanced, courageous examination of institutions like family, masculinity and courage.” The years of work of unflinchingly tracing and examining his troubling family history have culminated in 416 pages that carry the reader along, thanks to the “lyrical grace” of Mr. Junod’s writing, Mr. Lipsyte added.   

Tom Junod’s searches for information and for possible family members took him across the country, from the northeast to Florida, South Carolina to California.

But arguably some of the most poignant moments occur on Shelter Island, where he and his wife, Janet, bought a second home in 2000. It became a favorite place for them to take long walks, for Tom to swim in Fresh Pond, and for him to engage in dialogues about rock music with his friend David Browne for the entertainment of the Island community.

Here, in a book-lined office he created from a backyard shed, he wrote most of the book in the past few years. During a traditional Christmas Eve gathering at the Junods’ Island home, his family — Janet and their daughter, Nia — and closest friends, like Mr. Lipsyte and his wife, Lois B. Morris, witnessed the dramatic moment that brings it all together toward the end of the book. 

“Tom was quivering with shock and excitement,” Ms. Morris said, after he’d just received life-changing news. “It was so meaningful to be there to be part of this.” 

The moment’s exquisite details: Christmas Eve, a Sinatra album, a fateful email, came together for a climax that the most creative fiction writer would love to have conjured. “It reads like a great Russian novel,” Mr. Lipsyte said. “But it happens to be true.”

“In The Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to be a Man” will be published in March. It’s included in a NY Times list of Nonfiction Books Everyone Will be Talking About in 2026. There will be events featuring the author on Shelter Island during the summer, including one hosted by Finley’s Fiction.