Christine Kuehn’s father was never talkative about his family. The few stories he did share were told in exactly the same way, with the exact same words, every time. It was a piece of family history Christine was quite used to; one that didn’t trouble her until she got a letter from a screenwriter. The letter mentioned something about World War II and Nazi spies. And her family.

That letter was the start of a decades-long dig into family history; an investigation that uncovered sickening and heartbreaking secrets Christine never knew about—and, at times, regretted learning.

The narrative in Family of Spies is compelling. Kuehn takes us into the FBI archives as she pieces together her family tree. She learns about her uncle, a high-ranking Nazi, her aunt, an infamous spy whose history includes a past relationship with Joseph Goebbels, and her grandparents, Nazi spies who slipped information to the Japanese leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Family of Spies is exceptional; driven by both fact and feeling, Kuehn’s book transforms those carefully-worded family stories into a fuller, darker truth—one that reveals why some histories are told the same way every time, and others aren’t told at all.