Home > Events > Connect > Besters > Besters Book Club: Katherine Fennelly, “Family Declassified”
REGISTER
In Family Declassified, social scientist Katherine Fennelly unravels the enigmatic life of her grandfather, Francis Kalnay — a high-level Allied spy, vanished father, and celebrated children’s author — to explore the enduring weight of family secrets. Born into a Jewish Hungarian family scarred by tragedy, including the murder of his sister and nephew by Hungarian Fascists, Kalnay reinvented himself repeatedly. After abandoning his family in 1954, he fled to Mexico, crafting a new identity as an architect, gourmand, and Newbery Honor-winning author of Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa. Yet his literary fame eclipsed a shadowed past: decades as an OSS operative (the CIA’s precursor), where he rose to lead an elite espionage unit despite his foreign origins. Kalnay was among the few privy to ULTRA, the top-secret decryption of German Enigma codes critical to Allied victory.
Fennelly spent years excavating declassified records, genealogical archives, and personal interviews to expose truths Kalnay buried: his Jewish identity, covert WWII contributions, and the family trauma he never acknowledged. Blending memoir and investigative history, Family Declassified dissects how secrets shape legacies, revealing a man whose life mirrored the tumult of the 20th century — from Holocaust horrors to Cold War intrigue — and the myths families cling to survive. A gripping testament to the cost of silence and the power of unearthing hidden histories.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trained as a social scientist, Katherine Fennelly is an immigration policy expert whose work has taken her to many of the countries where her late grandfather lived out his adventures. She has studied and worked in Iran, Spain, and Ecuador and done consulting work and academic residencies across Latin America and Europe. Katherine is a voracious reader and a life-long student of languages. She discovered her family’s Jewish roots as an adult, something her Hungarian-American mother preferred not to discuss. When not tracking down classified documents and delving into family history, she volunteers for refugee service organizations, serves as a Spanish-English interpreter, and enjoys biking in Prospect Park and spending time with her daughters and granddaughters who live nearby in Brooklyn.
Friday, March 7
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Online
besters book club
Jeanne Fleming