"One night together had stood the world on its head," says Nell, our sharp-eyed narrator, about the evening when she meets her husband-to-be Charlie at a Columbia University party—and falls for him as they spar over F. Scott Fitzgerald and politics. Eight years later, she values her marriage to Charlie and their daughter over everything...except her 1960s political ideals. On the day JFK is shot, Charlie, a publisher, is mugged and murdered in Central Park. Nell is stupefied with loss, but soon finds out that his influential left-wing magazine, Compass, is not the mouthpiece for free speech she believes it to be. "I had loved Charlie for his integrity," says Nell, "and now that I'd found it a sham, I didn't know what to do with that love." She decides to write their story, which results in a compelling story-within-a-story of mystery, political intrigue, and forgiveness. Much of the fun comes from the literary cameos (think: Mary McCarthy, Richard Wright and Robert Lowell), but it's the novel's haunting portrait of a marriage that make this Cold War novel such a resonant for readers of any time period, including our own.
— Julie Buntin
