Brace yourself. It’s 1943. King Edward VIII sits on the English throne, courtesy of Adolf Hitler. Winston Churchill leads the British government-in-exile from New York City. All Europe marches to Nazi orders, save the Soviet Union. There, savage fighting continues for the third consecutive year. And in the United States, former Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long is serving his second term as President. He presides over an antisemitic, pro-Nazi regime that has erected a vast nationwide network of labor camps. There, tens of thousands of underfed and overworked dissidents, immigrants, labor organizers, journalists, and Communists languish without hope of mercy. And among them is Tony Miller, the rebellious brother of Probationary Inspector Sam Miller of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire police department. The fate of these two young men is central to the events in Brendan DuBois’s thoughtful alternate history detective story, Amerikan Eagle.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Parallel plotlines pointing toward a shattering conclusion
Sam Miller leads a precarious life, his fate balanced between the whims of two men who hate each other. His boss, City Marshal (police chief) Harold Hanson, threatens to yank away his probationary status as the force’s sole Detective Inspector if he doesn’t toe the line—the Party line. Huey Long’s Party, the country’s only remaining political party. And his father-in-law, Portsmouth Mayor Lawrence Young, despises him, thinking him a poor match for his daughter and forever looking for ways to undermine him. And when a body turns up on the railroad tracks—Sam’s first-ever murder case—the danger multiplies. His dogged insistence on pursuing the case to the end risks setting off a dangerous reaction from both men. Neither wants him to solve the case.
Meanwhile, trouble is brewing elsewhere. A man is slowly working his way through the streets of Portsmouth on a mysterious mission. From time to time he meets with coconspirators, but the mission remains unknown to us. And it won’t become clear until days later when a monumental meeting takes place in Portsmouth: a summit between Chancellor Adolf Hitler and President Huey Long on the site of the Navy Yard where Teddy Roosevelt negotiated the peace treaty in 1905 that won him the Nobel Prize.
Amerikan Eagle: The Special Edition by Brendan DuBois (2011) 621 pages ★★★★☆
A jarring look back at the 1940s
Eighty years ago the United States was a very different place—in reality, and not just in this alternate history. For one thing, there were 200 million fewer people living here. And, as the novel indicates, you could easily pronounce practically everyone’s name. The characters have Anglo-Saxon, Irish, or Italian names, with a smattering of Slavic thrown in for good measure. (The story is set in New England. Precious few Scandinavians and almost no Latinos.) Why? Action in the novel takes place two decades before the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates to migrants from Latin America and Asia.
A word about the writing style
Writing style? There is no style to the prose in this novel. It’s the most colorless example of the use of the English language that I’ve come across since . . . well, since I read Curious George as a five-year-old. Amerikan Eagle works beautifully as an alternate history detective story. DuBois has plotted it skillfully. The characters are complex and believable, even the bad guys. And the story is suspenseful and chock full of surprises. But in no way would I describe this book as a pleasure to read.
About the author
Brendan DuBois has written 28 novels and more than 180 short stories in the mystery and suspense genre. Amerikan Eagle is one of his two novels of alternate history. The first of those two, Resurrection Day, is his best known work. DuBois was born in 1959 in Dover, New Hampshire, not far from Portsmouth, where this novel is set.
For related reading
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