The Lead Title · Complete Manuscript
Success,
In Spite of Myself.
A memoir told without spin — from a locked front door on Chicago's South Side to horses at the pyramids, from radar work in Egypt to a compliance firm built and sold.
Literary Memoir
Complete Manuscript
Seeking Representation
Synopsis
The book, in brief.
Adopted at birth into a family on the South Side, homeless by seventeen, Thomas A. Cronin worked his way to Loras College in Dubuque and then into a United States Coast Guard recruiter's office. The service sent him overseas, with postings on Saipan and New York: radar work in Egypt, a brief marriage into an Egyptian family, and a set of stories that give the memoir several of its most improbable chapters. He came home with a Distinguished Service Medal.
What came next was Enron. When Sarbanes-Oxley became law, Cronin founded TrumbullCrow Consulting and worked inside Fortune 500 boardrooms, writing bylined columns for CIO and BusinessWeek. A hepatitis C diagnosis interrupted the trajectory; a clinical trial provided a cure. Single fatherhood arrived on its own timetable. In 2023 he sold the firm and returned to the desk.
The result is a memoir that reads like reporting from inside a life most people only read about — gritty, honest, adventurous, and, in the end, quietly redemptive.
Story Beats · No Spoilers
Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa.
Adopted into a family on Chicago's South Side.
United States Coast Guard; postings including Egypt and Saipan.
Homeless at seventeen.
General Electric Radar work in Egypt and Turkey
Distinguished Service Medal for saving the lives of a newlywed couple from Japan
Founder and sold Allstate Environmental Safety Corporation
A brief marriage into an Egyptian family.
Bylined in CIO and BusinessWeek.
Single fatherhood.
A hepatitis C diagnosis, a clinical trial, and a cure.
A marriage to a Russian OB/GYN
Sold TrumbullCrow, 2023; returned full-time to the desk.
Senior leadership role with a French company, Systar
Founded TrumbullCrow Consulting during the Sarbanes-Oxley era.