OFF THE RADAR

A spy story, a mystery, a father-son heartbreaker: Cyrus Copeland seeks the truth about his father, an American executive arrested in Iran for spying at the time of the 1979 hostage crisis, then put on trial for his life in a Revolutionary Court.

As a young boy living in Tehran in 1979, Cyrus Copeland, child of an American father and Iranian mother, never dreamed that his dad, an executive with Westinghouse, would be in danger for his life. That is, until the moment his father was arrested on espionage charges and put on trial in a Revolutionary Court, just as over 50 other Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy by Islamist militants.

As the hostage crisis received most of the attention from the media and White House, it was left largely to Copeland's mother and family to negotiate his father's reprieve from the firing squad. Now, more than thirty years later, Copeland sets out to find the truth about Max Copeland. Was he in fact an intelligence operative caught red-handed by the Iranian regime, or was he innocent?

Part mystery, part reportage, and part detective work, this memoir is a brilliantly original family saga and an unforgettable portrait of Iran after the Shah.

Cyrus Copeland, a former copywriter and advertising executive, is the editor of two previous collections of eulogies, Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time and A Wonderful Life: 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit. He lives in New York City.