4.0
Back Channel
ByPublisher Description
October 1962. The Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. Warships and submarines are on the move. Planes are in the air. Troops are at the ready. Both leaders are surrounded by advisers clamoring for war. The only way for the two leaders to negotiate safely is to open a “back channel”—a surreptitious path of communication hidden from their own people. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk . . . but they’re careful not to tell her that.
Stephen L. Carter’s gripping new novel, Back Channel, is a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction—a suspenseful retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the fate of the world rests unexpectedly on the shoulders of a young college student.
On the island of Curaçao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance.
In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance.
And in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen, one of the few black women at Cornell, is asked to go to Eastern Europe to babysit a madman.
As the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. Pursued by the hawks on both sides, protected by nothing but her own ingenuity and courage, Margo is drawn ever more deeply into the crossfire—and into her own family’s hidden past.
Stephen L. Carter’s gripping new novel, Back Channel, is a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction—a suspenseful retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the fate of the world rests unexpectedly on the shoulders of a young college student.
On the island of Curaçao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance.
In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance.
And in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen, one of the few black women at Cornell, is asked to go to Eastern Europe to babysit a madman.
As the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. Pursued by the hawks on both sides, protected by nothing but her own ingenuity and courage, Margo is drawn ever more deeply into the crossfire—and into her own family’s hidden past.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities16 Reviews
4.0
itsmonteprice
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“https://youtu.be/c3NxZidIEWc
The Kennedy era with the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically feels like a hot time period for lots of people that want to craft stories. There are so many movies and books that cover this time period, but this is the one that's for me. I loved every second I spent watching Margot go from the Cornell campus to behind the Iron Curtain to being back stateside and still finding herself face to face with Soviet Intelligence Assets and having to figure out a way to get out of the situation that she finds herself in.
I've never read a Jack Reacher or Jack Ryan or Bond or whoever book, but I felt that this scratches a similar itch for me that all of those do for so many other readers. Only here our main character isn't some super skilled former military person, she's a regular girl from around the way that is both in over her head but also wanting to be like her father and be an asset to her country when her country is asking too much of her. In some ways it's also her learning that in allowing herself to be used in this way it can go sideways, and even if it doesn't she is going to have to spend the rest of her life worrying about things that so many other people her same age are never going to think twice about.
It was cold war perfection, easily one of the books by Carter that felt cinematic in a way that felt like I had been robbed of something by never having had the opportunity to watch a miniseries version of the events that had me in a choke hold to read about.”
Lisa Gray
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“I absolutely love Carters books and this one about the Cuban Missile crisis is no exception. It’s a great way to learn about a historical event in the context of a fictional story.”
Debie Orrell
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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Debie Orrell
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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Mike Chirdin
Created almost 4 years agoShare
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