Famous Family Secrets

May 23, 2007 — -- Oprah Winfrey's father, Vernon, will probably never get his tell-all book on his daughter's must-read book club list. At the moment, "Things Unspoken," is not in bookstores; it's being shopped to agents. But a couple of excerpts are already circulating, and they paint a less-than-flattering picture of the media superstar.

The memoir gossips about Oprah as a child, when she was living in Milwaukee with her mother and visiting her estranged father in Nashville, Tenn.

"Our daughter was out of hand, an unruly child," Vernon quotes Oprah's mother, Vernita, as saying, "She said she stayed out all times of the night and lied regarding her whereabouts, said she made herself known to boys," he writes.

That interesting euphemism is just the beginning.

"She had secrets," writes Oprah's father. "Dark secrets," he continues. "Some I didn't discover till she was a grown woman, till it was too late."

When Winfrey was informed about the book by the New York Daily News, she said she was "shocked and disappointed," according to an article published Tuesday.

Winfrey is just one example of the famous and would-be famous contending with relatives who write "family secret" books and magazine articles or talk "out of school" on TV shows. A brief search turned up the following examples of publicity engendered family feuds.