True Believers - Kurt Andersen

In True Believers, Kurt Andersenthe New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Centurydelivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960sand indelibly captures the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now.Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968an episode shes managed to keep secret for more than forty years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, shes about to let the world in on that shocking secretas soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions.As junior-high-school kids back in the early sixties, Karen and her two best friends, Chuck and Alex, roamed suburban Chicago on their bikes looking for intrigue and excitement. Inspired by the exotic romance of Ian Flemings James Bond novels, they acted out elaborate spy missions pitting themselves against imaginary Cold War villains. As friendship carries them through childhood and on to collegein a polarized late-sixties America riven by war and race as well as sex, drugs, and rock and rollthe bad guys cease to be the creatures of make-believe. Caught up in the fervor of that extraordinary and uncanny time, they find themselves swept into a dangerous new game with the highest possible stakes.Today, only a handful of people are left who know what happened. As Karen reconstructs the past and reconciles the girl she was then with the woman she is now, finally sharing pieces of her secret past with her national-security-cowboy boyfriend and Occupy-activist granddaughter, the power of memory and history and luck become clear. A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersens most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.