Gods of Deception - 491

"Gods of Deception is an accomplished and compelling novel of enormous ambition, and it offers the most searching and thoughtful examination of the crisis and transformation of the old WASP establishment that I have seen. David Cleveland is a major American novelist whose ear for language, eye for both natural and artistic detail, cultural scholarship, understanding of human character, and feel for American social reality, make him a national treasure." -- The Washington Examiner, Walter Russell Mead. "Truly compelling . . . an engaging fictionalized account of an absorbing espionage case." -- Kirkus Reviews "A magisterial achievement" -- Medium: The Reading Lists "Gods of Deception is a powerful novel about guilt, family, art and spies, which spans generations going back to the Cold War and America's hunt for Communists in the 1950s." --Crime Fiction Lover "A thrilling spy story that encompasses family tragedy, unrequited love, astrophysics, art, and much more." --Manhattan Book Review "A saga of epic proportions . . . Gods of Deception packs a punch in delivering a powerful conspiracy thriller that will captivate readers." -- Novels Alive "Gods of Deception takes readers on a journey that is immensely compelling and unforgettable." -- Forever Lost in Literature "Complex, layered and full of historical analysis... Although reading such a hefty book may feel like a daunting prospect, rest assured that Gods of Deception well rewards its readers at many levels." --Crime Fiction Lover (Viki Weisfeld) *5 Star Review* "Gods of Deception is the brilliant new work of historical fiction by David Adams Cleveland, who takes the reader on an epic, revisionist sweep through post-war American history." -- Venetian Vase At age ninety-five, Judge Edward Dimock, patriarch of his family and the man who defended accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss in the famous 1950 Cold War "trial of the century," is writing his memoir at his fabled Catskill retreat, Hermitage, with its glorious Italian Renaissance ceiling. Judge Dimock is consumed with doubts about the troubling secrets he's kept to himself for over fifty years―secrets that might change both American history and the lives of his entire family. Was his client guilty of spying for Stalin or not? And if guilty, did Hiss's crimes go far beyond his perjury conviction―a verdict that divided the country for a generation? Dimock enlists his grandson, George Altmann, a brilliant Princeton astrophysicist, in the quest for truth. Reluctantly, George finds himself drawn into the web of deceit that has ravaged his family, his curiosity sparked by a string of clues found in the Judge's unpublished memoir and in nine pencil sketches of accused Soviet agents pinned to an old corkboard in his grandfather's abandoned office. Even more dismaying, the drawings are by George's paternal grandfather and namesake, a once-famous painter who covered the Hiss trial as a courtroom artist for the Herald Tribune, only to die in uncertain circumstances in a fall from Woodstock's Fishkill Bridge on Christmas Eve, 1949. Many of the suspected spies also died from ambiguous falls (a KGB specialty) or disappeared behind the Iron Curtain―and were conveniently unable to testify in the Hiss trial. George begins to realize the immensity of what is at stake: deceptive entanglements that will indeed alter the accepted history of the Cold War―and how he understands his own unhappy Woodstock childhood, growing up in the shadow of a rumored suicide and the infidelities of an alcoholic father, a roadie with The Band. In Gods of Deception, acclaimed novelist David Adams Cleveland has created a multiverse all its own: a thrilling tale of espionage, a family saga, a stirring love story, and a meditation on time and memory, astrophysics and art, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey into the troubled human heart as well as the past―a past that is ever present, where the gods of deception await our distant call.
ASIN: 1626349185
VSKU: DBV.1626349185.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:David Adams Cleveland
Binding: Hardcover