This is my fourth novel by Carter that I’ve read, my favorite being his last book, THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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. In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance.Īnd 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.Īs the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. On the island of Curaçao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance. 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. but they’re careful not to tell her that. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. 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. Both leaders are surrounded by advisers clamoring for war. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. The Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba.
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