The Only Thing to Fear
In the tradition of The Day of the Jackal and Death by Lightning, USA Today-bestselling author David Poyer crafts a tale of politics, assassination, ambition, statesmanship, sacrifice, and love, set against the background of a world at war.
It is the apocalyptic spring of 1945. A young Navy lieutenant, convalescing from action in the Pacific, is transferred to Franklin Roosevelt's personal staff. But 27-year-old John Fitzgerald Kennedy has another mission. His boss, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Leahy, thinks enemy coded traffic points to an assassin in FDR's personal circle. Who is trying to kill the President? Why? And how? JFK and screen star and Roosevelt admirer Lauren Wolfe, "The most glamorous woman in the world," are suddenly the "detectives" as the clock ticks down to April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia . . . where two ruthless men, one Russian, one German, and a shadowy and determined American traitor will attempt to alter the course of history.
Set against a vast sweep of stunningly re-created backgrounds -- a bombed and burning Berlin, coastal Virginia, the glitter of Palm Beach and Hollywood, the killing fields of Eastern Europe, wartime Washington and small-town Georgia -- THE ONLY THING TO FEAR brings the legendary figures of fifty years ago to fierce and passionate life. Using hundreds of hours of on-site research, interviews, and declassified documents, a master storyteller re-weaves the tapestry of the final days of World War Two into a chillingly plausible portrait of what might really have happened . . . .and reimagines our country's greatest heroes in a way that is sure to trigger controversy.
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David Poyer
DAVID POYER was born in DuBois, Pennsylvania in 1949. He grew up in Brockway, Emlenton, and Bradford, and graduated from Bradford Area High School in 1967. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1971, and later received a master’s degree from George Washington University.
His active and reserve naval service included sea duty in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific, and shore duty at the Pentagon, Fleet Training Center, Surface Warfare Development Group, Joint Forces Command, and in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He retired from the Joint Forces Command as a captain, with the Defense Superior Service Medal as his highest award.
Poyer has taught or lectured at Annapolis, Flagler College, University of Pittsburgh, Old Dominion University, the Armed Forces Staff College, the University of North Florida, Christopher Newport University, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and other institutions. He has been a guest on PBS’s “Writer to Writer” series and on Voice of America, and has appeared at the Southern Festival of Books and many other literary events. He taught for sixteen years in the Maslow MA/MFA in Creative Writing faculty at Wilkes University. He’s currently a fellow at the Virginia Center of Creative Arts and teaches at the Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat. He lives on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with novelist Lenore Hart.
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