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Overview
From the highly acclaimed author of Bandbox and Dewey Defeats Truman–a searing new historical novel about the competing claims of faith, love, and politics during the McCarthy era.Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s: a world of bare-knuckled ideology, hard drinking, and secret dossiers, dominated by such outsized characters as Richard Nixon, Drew Pearson, Perle Mesta, and Joe McCarthy. Into this fevered city steps Timothy Laughlin, a recent Fordham graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. A chance encounter with a handsome, profligate State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim’s first job in D.C. and–after Fuller’s advances–his first love affair. Now, as McCarthy mounts an increasingly desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on “sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. Drawn into a maelstrom of deceit and intrigue, and clinging to the friendship of a beautiful young woman named Mary Johnson, Tim struggles to reconcile his political convictions, his love for God, and his love for Fuller–an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal.
Moving between the Senate Office Building and the Washington Evening Star, the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO’s front line in Europe, Fellow Travelers is energized by high political drama, unexpected humor, and genuine heartbreak. It is Thomas Mallon’s most accomplished and daring novel to date.
Synopsis
It's 1950s Washington, D.C.: a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, dominated by personalities like Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy. Enter Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on “sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. Moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe, Fellow Travelers is a searing historical novel infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and genuine heartbreak.
— The Washington Post - David Leavitt
All told, there's something wonderfully over-the-top about Fellow Travelers, and particularly about Hawk, who, starting with his penetrating name, is a sort of fill-in-the-blanks avatar of masculine potency. And while his aw-shucks humor and sheeny wit eventually betray his spiritual emptiness, these qualities also allow him to pass the State department's queer test with flying colors. Not surprisingly, he's a "top." Tim, by contrast, is as much of a "foggy bottom" as the D.C. neighborhood in which he and Hawk tryst.
Editorials
Michael Gorra
… the book lights up every time Fuller’s cold, confident face appears, and Mallon is nowhere better than in the deliberately underplayed scene in which the man from Foggy Bottom makes his final choice.— The New York Times
David Leavitt
All told, there's something wonderfully over-the-top about Fellow Travelers, and particularly about Hawk, who, starting with his penetrating name, is a sort of fill-in-the-blanks avatar of masculine potency. And while his aw-shucks humor and sheeny wit eventually betray his spiritual emptiness, these qualities also allow him to pass the State department's queer test with flying colors. Not surprisingly, he's a "top." Tim, by contrast, is as much of a "foggy bottom" as the D.C. neighborhood in which he and Hawk tryst.— The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
McCarthy-era Washington, D.C., is as twisted and morally compromised as a noir Los Angeles in Mallon's latest, a wide-ranging examination of betrayal and clashing ideologies. The young ladies in the secretary pool are agog over dapper bureaucrat Hawkins Fuller, though his attentions covertly focus on newly minted Fordham graduate and good Catholic Tim Laughlin. Hawkins helps Tim land a job and, after feeling out the impressionable young man, makes a place in his bed for him. Mary Johnson, a friend to both closeted men, watches with rising alarm as Tim and Hawkins carry on their affair and Washington seethes in paranoia over Communists and "sexual deviation." Mary, meanwhile, succumbs to her own lustful yearnings and has an affair with a married businessman, leading to a predictable, though deftly played, quandary. The District's social milieu is solidly realized, with such period icons as Mary McGrory and Drew Pearson in evidence alongside political heavyweights—McCarthy, Kennedy, Nixon and the like. Less convincing, however, is the on-again-off-again and largely one-sided relationship between Washington greenhorn Tim and cold, calculating careerist Hawkins. Mallon (Bandbox; Dewey Defeats Truman) offers an intricate, fluent and divergent perspective on a D.C. rife with backstabbing and power grabbing. (May)
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