Overview

The major motion picture Flag Day starring Sean Penn and his daughter Dylan Penn is based on this father-daughter story of a charming criminal--told by the daughter who loved him. One frosty winter morning in 1995, Jennifer Vogel opened the newspaper and read that her father had gone on the run. John Vogel, fifty-two, had been arrested for single-handedly counterfeiting nearly $20 million in US currency--the fourth-largest sum ever seized by federal agents--and then had been released pending trial. Though Jennifer hadn't spoken to her father in more than four years, the police suspected he might turn up at her Minneapolis apartment. She examined the shadows outside her building, and thought she spotted him at the grocery store and the bus stop. He had simply vanished. Framed around the six months her father eluded authorities, Jennifer's memoir documents the police chase--stakeouts, lie-detector tests, even a segment on Unsolved Mysteries--and vividly chronicles her tumultuous childhood while examining her father's legacy. A lifelong criminal who robbed banks, burned down buildings, scammed investors, and even plotted murder, John Vogel was also a hapless dreamer who wrote a novel, baked lemon meringue pies, and took his ten-year-old daughter to see Rocky in an empty theater on Christmas Eve. When it came time to pass his counterfeit bills, he spent them at Wal-Mart for political reasons. Culling from memories, photo albums, public documents, and interviews with the handful of people who knew the real John Vogel, this is an intimate and intensely moving psychological portrait of a charismatic, larger-than-life figure--as told by the daughter who nearly followed in his footsteps.

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Reviews

[Vogel's] story, a dark eulogy, fascinates. -- Newsday Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. -- Time Out New York Original, tragic, and heartbreaking in the way only true life can be. -- Entertainment Weekly Vogel evokes the dual nature of our intimate lives as well as the struggle between the straight and the criminal. -- San Francisco Chronicle Vogel's masterful account...will haunt readers for days. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[Vogel's] story, a dark eulogy, fascinates. -- ""Newsday"" Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. -- ""Time Out New York"" Original, tragic, and heartbreaking in the way only true life can be. -- ""Entertainment Weekly"" Vogel evokes the dual nature of our intimate lives as well as the struggle between the straight and the criminal. -- ""San Francisco Chronicle"" Vogel's masterful account...will haunt readers for days. -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"""

Author Information

Jennifer Vogel worked as a writer and reporter in Minneapolis for seven years before moving to Seattle, where she was editor-in-chief of the Stranger. She moved back to Minneapolis in 2003. Karen White has been narrating audiobooks since 1999, with more than two hundred to her credit. Honored to be included in AudioFile's Best Voices and Speaking of Audiobooks's Best Romance Audio 2012 and 2013, she is also an Audie Award finalist and has earned multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and Library Journal starred reviews. She currently lives with her family in Wilmington, North Carolina. Publishers Weekly says of Karen's narration of Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, ""Karen White delivers a stunning reading, her character interpretations are confident and well-rounded, and she forges a strong bond with the audience."" Speaking of Audiobooks says, ""Karen is one of my auto-buy narrators-if I think a book may interest me, her narration will sway me to give it a try.""

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