UNPUBLISHED NOVEL SYNOPSES (dust jacket)
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Friendly Casualties
Friendly Casualties, centered on the Têt Offensive of 1968, tells the stories of casualties, Vietnamese and American, of the Vietnam war. At the core is the destruction of the McIntyre family—the colonel, his wife, and their two sons. In the first part, “Triage,” set between February, 1967 and April, 1976, one soldier murders another, an old Vietnamese woman gives up her chances of survival to save an American child, a woman marries the wrong man, a lieutenant sacrifices his life for questionable motives, a reporter helps soldiers build their club, and a military family disintegrates. Casualties are GIs (the killer Kerney, angelic Griffin, the black alcoholic Diver, the aspiring journalist Sam), officers (the retired cancer-ridden Colonel McIntyre; his elder son, Jamey, the army doctor whose wife kills herself; Earl’s younger son, Chris, who cannot live up to his father’s expectations), Vietnamese (the old amah Yen, the prostitute Xuan, and the shadowy Doctor Xuyen), and American civilians (the alienated journalist, Larry; the ugly-duckling Sissy; the flirt Roxie; and Betsy, Earl’s estranged wife).
In part two, “Healing,” the threads of the disparate lives are brought together through the story of Maggie, an intelligence analyst at the Embassy in Saigon who violates security to save her lover. At the end, Maggie agrees to have lunch with a one-armed soldier because “we have to begin somewhere” to learn all over again how to live.
The novel is written as a series of interlinked stories and a novella reminiscent of J. D. Salinger, Louise Erdrich, and Thorton Wilder. It explores the clash between people struggling for salvation and the relentless force of a bloody war. Some of the casualties are destroyed; others find a way, however imperfect, to go on living.
The Secretocracy
The secretocracy is in power. The right to know has been rescinded. Voters must
never learn about secret programs that can be used against them. Members of Congress will not receive security clearances. The military and security apparatus is in the iron grip of the Angler (the Vice-President), and the President is briefed only on what he can absorb. To assure that their
hold on power, will never be shaken, the incumbents are altering the makeup of
the electorate so that their party will never again lose an election.
But federal budget reviewer Doctor Gene Westmoreland is too proud to collude in
the Bush Administration’s attempts to mount an illegal operation—building clandestine
nuclear missile sites world-wide. A general rebukes him and a senator threatens him.
When he persists, his phone is tapped, his car tailed, and his son trapped into a
dangerous relationship. His supportive boss is blackmailed and kills himself. Without
his protection, Gene is stripped of his security clearances and exiled to a warehouse to
await termination. When he tries to contact an ally in the Senate, he is
blackmailed. He has no way out. If he discloses what he knows, he will be prosecuted for
revealing classified information. How can one man fight a whole administration?
The Secretocracy is a what-if meditation in fiction—what if an administration decided to
undertake an unlawful operation? If it happened under Nixon and under Reagan, could
it have happened again under Bush?
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TOM’S TALES