Description
In Deadfall, Patti Darvis, author of Home Front and the daughter of former president Reagan, tells a story set in the placid neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the jungles of Nicaragua, and the corridors of Congress and the ClA. Deadfall is a novel about how political conspiracy infects private lives, how a war in Central America hits home.
Darren Laverty is a young woman contentedly living in the canyons near Los Angeles, working as an artist and pondering becoming a mother. When her husband, Andrew, a filmmaker, is hired to shoot a documentary in Nicaragua, Darren insists on accompanying him. Soon her life and Andrew’s are affected by forces they cannot control.
Deep in Nicaragua, Darren and Andrew witness the brutal and seemingly senseless killing of a fellow American. Andrew surreptitiously begins recording evidence of illegal – and murderous – American involvement in Central America. But Andrew, it seems, knows too much; back in Los Angeles, he himself becomes a victim of violence. Her life shattered, Darren vows to seek justice.
Furiously grieving, and newly pregnant with her husband’s child, Darren pieces together Andrew’s evidence and begins to follow the tortuous path left by those renegade Americans who seem to have masterminded the killings in Central America Her increasingly public quest leads her to Senator Kent James of California, an outspoken opponent of the contras. Kent, alienated from his own wife, grows close to Darren, and the two of them discover a conspiracy more potent and ominous than either had imagined.
Menaced and threatened repeatedly, Darren at last uncovers the identity of the killers. They reside disturbingly close to home – and close to the nerve center of American political power.
Evocatively written and movingly told, Deadfall is an impressive novel about a young woman’s call to courage.
Hardcover. 262 pages. In very good to excellent preloved condition.