Family Trade by James Carroll (1982)

Family Trade
by James Carroll
Publisher:  Little, Brown and Company
Copyright:  1982
First Edition

With this new work, master storyteller James Carroll has written his most ambitious novel to date:  Family Trade is as compelling a narrative as his bestselling Mortal Friends and as rich in moral vision as his critically acclaimed Fault Lines.  A gripping story of international intrigue, Family Trade is also a profound exploration of the morality of the hidden conflict between East and West.  Told from the perspective of Jake McKay, son and nephew of two of the men who plan and conduct this "quiet war," James Carroll's novel focuses on the human costs of choices that intelligence officers must make.

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1960: Against a background of the election of a new President and the crises caused by Berlin, the U-2 and notorious defections, Jake McKay begins a promising career as a student at Georgetown University.  At an art gallery he is smitten by the sight of a beautiful young girl, but suddenly his youthful preoccupations are shattered as he stumbles on a first sign of his father's great secret.  The discovery implies adultery, deceit, and betrayal, and it devastates him.  Seeking the truth he turns to his uncle, only to suffer an even more devastating blow, one that destroys his family.

LONDON, BERLIN, 1945:  The orders come from number 10 Downing Street.  Group Captain Giles Patterson, Jake's uncle, and Colonel John McKay, his father, are to undertake the greatest challenge of their exemplary wartime careers in British and American military intelligence:  to parachute into Berlin and, with the aid of the local Communist underground, to cut off Hitler's planned escape from the city.  Yet this extraordinary mission is merely a cover for their real assignment -- to destroy all documents and evidence of Nazi work on the atomic bomb before they can fall into Russian hands.  In the chaotic and violent moments between the Nazi's defeat and the Red Army's victory, these two men discover one of the great secrets of the coming Cold War, and a great secret about their personal friendship.  Now they must find a way of living with both forever.

BOSTON, BERLIN, 1980:  Jake McKay is an English professor whose complacent and comfortable life cannot protect him from a keen sense of failed expectations.  He is visited by a beautiful German woman, who was the young girl from the art gallery years before and whose image in Jake's mind has always been tied to the unanswered questions of his youth.  These mysteries still haunt him, and so he accompanies her on a secret mission to Berlin.

There, amid the painful memories of the last war Jake learns the shocking truth, and it is not all what expects.  Suddenly he discovers that he is at the center of the secret, and for one extraordinary moment he must play the family trade at last.

If Family Trade has a special depth and urgency, it is because it comes out of the imagination of a gifted novelist who is himself the son of an American intelligence official.  a fast-paced story of espionage at the highest level, it is also a deeply felt examination of the shattering consequences that men and women suffer when their most crucial duty involves deceit and their loyalty requires betrayal.

Condition: Used. Hardcover. Dust cover shows a bit of edge wear and tear. Dust cover is darkened from age.  There are stamps on the top of the pages when the book is closed and on the title page.  Pages are tanning from age. Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the title page.

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