Published in 1991, the work considers in depth several scenes and events from the author's life, from his father’s suicide through to his time spent as a visiting professor at Wheaton College.

There were times when he almost seemed a secret we were trying to keep from each other.’[3] Twenty-two years after the suicide, Buechner recounts his mother’s ‘fury’ at the ‘brief and fictionalized version’ of the event that he included in his third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs (1958).

Remembering his mother, the author proceeds to consider his own experience of parenthood, and the traumas of raising children through difficult circumstances, including a brush with anorexia nervosa.

[4] The memoir also includes reflections on the differing pluralistic and Evangelical cultures Buechner experienced while lecturing at Harvard Divinity School[5] and Wheaton College,[6] and his recollection of the process of writing his eleventh novel, Brendan (1987).

[2] Commenting upon Buechner's memoirs, scholar Dale Brown writes that the autobiographical works ‘illustrate Buechner’s theory of what he calls the “sacred function of memory” – the obliteration of the artificial designations of past, present, and future in order to reinhabit and reunderstand the moments of our lives.’[9] Regarding Telling Secrets in particular, Brown builds upon this idea, writing that it is 'a confession',[10] 'an attempt to order apparent chaos', and 'an untangling of [...] family connections as well as a study of the price of denial'.