A Disturbance of Fate
In this daring and compulsively page-turning historical what-if fiction, Robert F. Kennedy, on a lightning trip to Los Angeles in his campaign for the presidency in 1968, narrowly misses assassination by Sirhan Sirhan. "Bobby" (he preferred to be called "Bob") is undeterred. In Chicago, where radical students are preparing to throw the coming Democratic presidential convention into chaos, he manages to enlist radical Dave Dellinger, as well as Mayor Daley, in a bid to avoid chaos. So commences a remarkably realistic alternative world story that is at heart a 700-page political document covering a single generation. Its enormous panoply of mostly genuine names all play the expected roles, sometimes with little introduction (readers with knowledge of the period and its actors will be at an advantage). Unapologetically opinionated, challenging, thought provoking, the book only gradually veers from established, or as Freedman puts it, "first timeline" history. (The novel's own history is the "RFK timeline.") It is a pretend chronicle that Ted Sorensen, who is also a character, might have written, with illuminating-even entertaining-footnotes for both time lines. Kennedy defeats Republican Richard Nixon, who vanishes for keeps. There is no Watergate, but Ronald Reagan waits in the wings. Kennedy withdraws American forces from Vietnam and, proposing simultaneous American and Soviet military withdrawal from Europe, resolves the Cold War. He fights off sex scandals, keeps his anti-abortion wife, Ethel, happy, makes some mistakes but is finally reelected. Despite its length, this is more than a fantasy about a departed icon of American culture. In its final chapters and a devastating appendix, it is revealed to be a cautionary tale as well.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.