Finale A Novel of the Reagan Years

A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Notable Book
 
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Before there was Reagan the conservative icon, there was Reagan the president: genial, unknowable, faced with doubters, scandals, and the final throes of the Cold War. In this extraordinary novel, Thomas Mallon takes us to the tense, high-stakes months in 1986 when—with the Iran-Contra affair, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev—Reagan and those around him were shaping history. We see Nancy Reagan—brooding, protective, consulting her astrologist at every turn. We see the young Christopher Hitchens—his incisive, acerbic voice lending a powerful counterpoint to events as they unfold. And we see Reagan himself: apparently warm but in fact distant and mercurial, by turns seeming to know more than he lets on and let on more than he knows. Written with impeccable language and savage wit, Finale is historical fiction of the highest order, brilliantly rendering the human drama behind these famous—and familiar—faces.

Thomas Mallon is the author of nine novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, and Watergate. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, and in 2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.

www.thomasmallon.com