Book Review: Breaking Free

IndieBookView

Jul 21

Breaking Free

by Cory Allen

Genre: Nonfiction / Memoir / LGBTQ

ISBN: 9781953610621

Print Length: 226 pages

Reviewed by Tucker Lieberman

Cory Allen presents a multi-faceted look at his professional and private life in his memoir Breaking Free: A Saga of Self-Discovery by a Gay Secret Service Agent.

He came out at age 26 in the mid-2000s. At 40, he began to write his memoir. In this intimate, thorough account, he reveals his perceptions of older male relatives who shaped his values and outlook on life, and he gives an honest assessment of a gay marriage that didn't work out. He makes a probing effort to stay faithful to what he really wants in life and what he's here to do.

His father left when he was two, and his mother had a string of relationships. One man seemed he might become a kind, involved stepfather, and the family moved with another man from Western Pennsylvania to Virginia, but neither stayed. Unfortunately, a physically abusive, drunken man moved in when Allen was nine and lived with them throughout his teenage years. Allen describes the abuse explicitly. He manages a positive outlook, saying that growing up with this man in the house inspired him to go into law enforcement.

On the other hand, he had many positive influences, like his maternal grandfather, whom he saw as "larger than life." His grandfather often told stories about how his plane was shot down over Europe in 1943, after which he was hidden by the French for months, then captured by the Gestapo and forced to walk 800 miles until the British came to save him at the end of the war. He spoiled his grandkids with attention and treats and was also "my moral compass." Allen's nostalgia for this part of his childhood, woven with the abuse he endured as a teenager by another man, gives a comprehensive and complex picture. He tells us all this in an inviting, friendly, conversational voice.

In 2001, he enlisted in the Virginia Air National Guard. That September, when the terrorist attacks occurred, he wasn't yet far enough along in his training to be deployed to the Middle East, so he always "felt as though I hadn't sacrificed like others I knew." However, he did continue in a similar career, becoming a police officer.

In his mid-twenties, he realized he was gay. He immediately bought a home to live near a gay man he'd befriended (though that man still lived with his ex). Allen ended up marrying this neighbor in 2009, and they traveled to Boston to make it legal, as same-sex marriage wasn't yet offered throughout the country. "We were the first gay couple we knew of to get married," he recalls. Through his precise choice of detail, he confesses his ambivalence: "My vows were on a sheet of paper and Sampson's was on his iPhone…I felt as though I should've been more ecstatic."