- Homeland Insecurities
A sprawling story about love, madness and ski flying, told in three distinct, funny, elegiac voices.
Gulbuddin, a businessman in Dubai who is looking for a new wife on the Internet, when his father, an Afghan warlord turned wanted terrorist, reappears.
Johan von Schmidt, an American-born Swiss-German skier who is still recovering from an injury suffered during this past winter’s Olympics. He and his older sister, a triumphant Gold Medalist, rendezvous with their mother and her rock-and-roll boyfriend in Berlin for a terrifying summer.
Ben Reed, an aspiring Montreal-based journalist who poses as a private investigator in Dubai to investigate a human-trafficking consortium led by a reclusive Russian oligarch.
Bernard, a former World War II counterintelligence agent, launches his last top secret mission from the trenches of his new home, a massive senior-living facility. Complicating matter is that it’s “Prom Night” at Whistling Pines, and Bernard, the reigning “Prom King” (not that he had anything to say about it), has a problem: his beloved wife of sixty-three years is dead–or is she? Bernard suspects foul play. As his investigation reaches a fever pitch, terrorizing his fellow seniors and in some cases friends, he comes to the conclusion that his wife may be alive after all. Esme, in fact, might have been abducted by the same enemy agents responsible for the disappearance of their son Franklin, over thirty years ago.
As Special Agent Bernard searches for his wife (and son), he gradually begins to lose his grip on reality. Along the way he encounters many memorable characters, many of whom turn into enemy agents, if only in his mind: his octogenarian lawn-bowling teammates, a former fighter pilot and a professional basketball player; an uncompromising fast-food manager; a kleptomaniacal stripper; a cross-dresser named Marlena Dietrich; an old World War II pal, who might or might not be alive; and a man who might or might not be his long-lost son, one of them anyway.
Tender, at times hilarious, and always deeply felt and humane, The Prom King is a novel about the madness of memory and the undying strength of love–and it’s the most bizarre “World War II novel” you’ll ever read.