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Book Summary and Reviews of A Geography of Secrets by Frederick Reuss

A Geography of Secrets by Frederick Reuss

A Geography of Secrets

by Frederick Reuss

  • Published:
  • Sep 2010, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Two men: One discovers the cost of keeping secrets, of building a career within a government agency where secrets are the operational basis. Noel Leonard works for the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center, mapping coordinates for military actions halfway around the world. One morning he learns that an error in his office is responsible for the bombing of a school in Afghanistan. And he knows suddenly that he is as alone as he is wrong.

From his windowless office in DC to an intelligence conference in Switzerland, and back to his daughter s college in Virginia, Noel claws his way toward a more personally honest life in which he can tell his family everything every day.

Another man learns that family secrets have kept him from who he is and from the ineluctable ways he is attached to a world he has always disdained. This unnamed narrator, a cartographer, is the son of a career diplomat whose activities in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and then in Europe during the Cold War may not have been what they were said to be. He, too, travels to Switzerland, but his quest is not to release himself from secrecy it is to learn how deep the secrets in his own life go. With a voice like John le Carre's and the international sensibility of Graham Greene, Frederick Reuss examines the unavoidably covert nature of lives that make their circles through Washington, DC. A Geography of Secrets is a novel of the time from an acclaimed author who knows the lay of the land.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"An understated but masterly work for fans of cosmopolitan, contemplative, contemporary prose." - Library Journal

This information about A Geography of Secrets was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Frederick Reuss

Frederick Reuss is the author of Horace Afoot, Henry of Atlantic City, The Wasties, and Mohr. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

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