My mother Lillian McCloy is the author of the highly-rated memoir Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant: Undercover and Overwhelmed as a CIA Wife and Mother. I edited the book, which John le Carré describes as “a charming and unusual portrait of the secret life.”

In our interview, I asked my then 95-year-old mother some readers’ questions about her life as the wife of an undercover CIA officer. I also read a story from her memoir titled “The Vigil," about an experience we shared when I was a senior in high school and we were living in Caracas, Venezuela.

Get full access to In This Life at johannamccloy.substack.com/subscribe