The Camelot Assassin
About the Book
The Camelot Assassin explores an alternate reality in which Robert F. Kennedy becomes president of the United States after his life is saved by a courageous but troubled journalist, Wex Hannon.
Despite her admiration for the president, Hannon is swept up in a deep state plot to remove RFK from office after Kennedy refuses to bomb Cambodia and escalate the Vietnam War.
When a congressional investigation threatens to expose the sordid details of John F. Kennedy’s personal life, Robert Kennedy moves to preserve his brother’s legacy, even as he faces the prospect of impeachment and a disgraceful end to his own presidency.
As President Kennedy unravels the mysteries behind JFK’s assassination, he is stalked by Richard Tavi, a CIA killer tasked with silencing the president before the dark truth can be revealed to the American people.
Tavi has always followed his orders, whether it’s terminating a would-be dictator overseas or eliminating organized crime figures in the United States. But as a man haunted by a past mission to murder a Hollywood starlet, Tavi faces a critical decision: Will he obey a directive to assassinate Kennedy, or join the president’s secret effort to end the war?
Believing that Tavi is going to murder President Kennedy, Hannon is wracked with insecurity, uncertain if she can trust her perception of reality or if she is merely falling victim to her own mental illness. It’s up to Hannon to overcome her crushing self-doubt to save the president and spare the country another national tragedy.
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Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan
About the Book
Paul Rusch first traveled from Louisville, Kentucky, to Tokyo in 1925 to help rebuild YMCA facilities in the wake of the Great Kanto earthquake. What was planned as a yearlong stay became his life's work as he joined with the Japan Episcopal Church to promote democracy and Western Christian ideals. Over the course of his remarkable life, Rusch served as a college professor and Episcopal missionary, and he was a catalyst for agricultural development, introducing dairy farming to highland Japan.
In Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan, Andrew T. McDonald and Verlaine Stoner McDonald present Rusch's life as an epic story that crisscrosses two cultures, traversing war and peace, destruction and rebirth, private struggle and public triumph. As World War II approached, Rusch battled racial prejudice against Japanese Americans, yet also became an apologist for Japan's expansionist foreign policy. After Pearl Harbor, he was arrested as an enemy alien and witnessed the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. Upon his release to the US in 1942, he joined military intelligence and returned to Japan in that capacity during the US occupation.
Though Rusch was of modest origins, he deftly climbed social and military ladders to befriend some of the most intriguing figures of the era, including prime ministers and members of the Japanese royal family. Though he is perhaps best remembered for introducing organized American football in Japan, his greatest legacy is the founding of the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project (KEEP), a vehicle for feeding, educating, and uplifting the rural poor of highland Japan. Today his legacy continues to inspire KEEP in the twenty-first century to promote peace, cultural exchange, environmental sustainability, and ecological preservation in Japan and beyond.
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Reviews
"The McDonalds have produced a highly readable and wide-ranging account of a crucial, complicated, and conflicted figure, whose life in and out of 20th century Japan connected him to many of the country's most significant events and developments. Reading Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan not only acquaints one with the life and work of Paul Rusch―it also provides one with a quick but comprehensive social history of Japan, from its cultural tumult of the 1920s through its peaceful return to global power in the 1970s." ― Jeffrey L. Richey, author of Confucius in East Asia: Confucianism's History in China, Korea, Japan, and Viet Nam
"Paul Rusch was many things: an idealist, a visionary, a missionary, an evangelist for American culture in Japan, a lover of Japan and its people. The authors portray a man trapped between his ideals of international engagement and global political and military realities. This work is a fascinating exploration of the multiple tensions in which Rusch found himself, especially that between his commitment to the kingdom of God and the realpolitik of his time. The authors explore Rusch's world and his passions, and examine the impact of his life against the backdrop of World War II and in comparison to his own visions. The work will be of tremendous value for those seeking to understand Japan's descent into war, as well as the role of American missionaries during this critical time in global history." ― Randy Kluver, author of Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities
"A fascinating story of Paul Rusch, founder of KEEP, and an important figure in postwar US–Japan relations. The McDonalds' well-written book weaves together Rusch's life story with the tumultuous history of Japan's relations with the United States from the militarism of the 1930s to the economic resurgence and democratization of the postwar years. It makes an important contribution to our knowledge about the history of US–Japan relations." ― Gerald L. Curtis, author of The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change
"The McDonalds' account. . . places Rusch in a broader context of US-Japan relations, surrounding the period of Japan's entry to the Pacific War and the US fight against communism. It is both readable for the general audience as a biography of a historically significant―although not necessarily widely known―figure, and informative for scholars interested in Japanese modern history, US diplomatic history, and the history of international relations." ― H-Net Reviews
"[Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan] marvelously grounds Rusch's life and KEEP's legacy in the themes of faith, help, and hope, providing common ground for a variety of readers. In the end, the authors accomplish their task of 'explor[ing] Paul Rusch's contributions to the shaping of a postwar Japan and how his legacy, the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project, continues to influence the world in the twenty-first century.'" ― The Journal of Southern Religion
The Red Corner by Verlaine Stoner McDonald
About the Book
The Red Corner chronicles the meteoric rise and decline of Communism on the prairies of northeastern Montana. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Sheridan County boasted a government largely run by Communists, a Communist camp for local youth, and an official newspaper of the Communist Party USA—the Producers News. By the mid-1930s, however, Communist influence in the region had waned, and area residents soon came to regard the county’s embrace of Communism as a shameful period in its history.
Through meticulous research in newspaper accounts, oral histories, FBI reports, and internal Communist Party files, author Verlaine Stoner McDonald reveals the colorful stories of such influential local Communists as newspaper editor and state senator Charles E. “Red Flag” Taylor and his comrade, county sheriff Rodney Salisbury, who was allegedly involved in graft, prostitution, and bootlegging. In so doing, she offers insights into how this remote part of the West came to be home to one of the nation’s most successful rural Communist organizations and how it eventually rejected radicalism and reconstituted itself as a typical farming community.
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Reviews
"McDonald has taken a bursting corner of forgotten Americana and made it unforgettable." ― Michael Peck, The Missoula Independent, 3/17/11
"It's a fascinating tale about a little-known piece of Montana history. There is surely enough drama in the headlines and in the FBI files and oral histories that she researched for an even larger volume, maybe even a great novel." ― Billings Gazette
"With local savvy and the detective skills of a first-rate scholar, Verlaine Stoner McDonald splendidly recreates the "Red days" of radical politics in the Depression-hit farm country of northeasternmost Montana. This extraordinary chapter of Montana history, little-known at best and often deliberately obscured, at last has found its clear true voice." ― Ivan Doig, author of Bucking the Sun
