Son's Eye: A Memoir

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Fifty year’s after his father’s death, Charles E. Israel began his
search “to resolve the riddles and paradoxes that characterized so
much of his life.” This scrupulously honest book records his journey
before Israel’s own death in 1999.

An expatriate American resident of Toronto from 1953 to 1999, Israel
published six novels and two biographies; wrote extensively for
television, film, and radio; and won several major awards for his
writing. He brings all of his considerable talents and skills to this
work of meticulously unearthing family secrets and long-buried
recollections about the public and private lives of his father. In this
book, Israel has constructed a compellingly readable docudrama of how
and why his father “metamorphosed so dramatically from mild
reactionary to warrior for social justice.”

Early in his sleuthing, Israel finds evidence of his father’s
infidelity and momentarily questions the wisdom of continuing his trek.
His personal integrity dictates that he forge ahead, so he visits his
father’s former residences, interviewing those who knew him as well as
long-forgotten family members. Like some Hercule Poirot, Israel
scavenges old newspaper articles, scrutinizes letters, and peruses
diaries and notebooks. In the end, the old man emerges as a tragic hero
with a fatal flaw—a rabbi with a social conscience who indulged in
extramarital womanizing on at least four occasions (one liaison was with
the mother of one of Israel’s own teenage sweethearts). Nevertheless,
his stature as a socially caring individual remains unblemished.

Throughout the memoir, Israel is uncompromisingly frank and open about
his father and his relationship to others, be they family, friends, or
foes. This a bare-bones examination leads Israel to conclude, “[N]ow
at last I’m at peace with both my love and his death.” Readers will
find this memorable journey well worth taking.