Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible

"Unafraid" is not just another new novel. Jeff Golden has done something more significant and unique. He has restored part of our country's story that was stolen from us on November 22, 1963 when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Many of us remember that day and the shock and profound sense of loss of someone in whom we had vested so many hopes. What we didn't realize is that we'd lost something more. We'd lost our belief in a whole realm of possibilities for this country. And, contrasted to JFK, the presidents who followed just hammered in the 'fact' that an irretrievable moment had passed with his death. Later revelations about Kennedy's personal life served to eradicate even our memory of those hopes. What was lost was a story of what this country might become if we had a president with the ability, vision and character to lead us in the right direction. Now, in the dark days of 2008, it is up to us to rebuild our nation. We need that lost story to bridge back to the point when we innocently believed in the better possibilities of America rather than being doomed to the worst. Jeff has restored that lost branch of the American story. He has changed one fact of November 22nd and created the story that could have happened. This gives us a vehicle for our imagination and our emotions to take the rebuilding of our country into our own hands. "Unafraid" needs to reach as many people as possible, especially during this election season. This a call to our fellow citizens to believe again in what America can be and to join our wills to make it a reality.

If you have any memory of John Kennedy and Camelot, this book is a must read. Not only extremely well written and balanced, but truly a novel of the possible. Hopefully Barack Obama gets to read this, as it certainly offers a course of action, both dangerous and thrilling which could make his world so much a better place. It also bears a curious resemblance to Obama's projected agenda. At a time when we face crossroads which may decide whether or not we remain alive on the planet, this inspires hope. Don't miss it - it's a great read!

What if JFK had survived Dallas? What if that experience had changed him, changed his sense of what was possible and necessary to do? That's the premise of a remarkable new book: Unafraid, by Jeff Golden. This is a very rich and engaging novel that deals with a fascinating array of Big Ideas: war and peace, the power of wealth and the power of vision, the Middle East, global domination vs. global equity, energy strategies (and more), along with the policies, politics, and public opinion that shape the world's realities. It also reveals the very personal qualities, values, and visions of the people who were there. There are wonderful encounters between JFK and Bobby Kennedy, leaders of Congress and of the corporate elite, J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King, Brezhnev, Castro, and many more. Jeff Golden is a deeply insightful observer of society and politics, and he raises vitally important issues in this fascinating and very entertaining narrative. It's an important contribution that's also a treat to read. I hope that many people will read it and then spread the word to others.

Jeff Golden's striking new novel Unafraid carries the theme of his As If We Were Grownups, a political primer published during the 2004 campaign, into fiction. Grownups offers ten imagined political speeches -- speeches that would require vision and courage that seem to be absent from contemporary political life. Convincing a VFW group that military spending is too high, or telling the Iowa Farm Council that government should not subsidize ethanol. In Unafraid, Golden continues his idealistic yet intriguingly practical political speculation in a fascinating work of fiction which considers what might have happened in American public life if John F. Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt in Dallas. The book is smoothly paced and compelling. Golden's point of view character is Kennedy`s daughter Caroline, reading a draft of a definitive biography of her father. We benefit from her own recollections added to the painstaking research of the biographer. It's tricky at first to discern where the fiction departs from history, but then quite satisfying to be caught up in the profile in courage that ensues. What becomes of J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Fidel Castro, the Cold War, American-Israeli-Arab relations, and the First World/Third World divide in a decade or two in which JFK is left to follow his star? When Kennedy survives we are relieved of the depression and cynicism that have burdened our civic life to this day. We applaud his victories, and grasp the possibility of new and hopeful directions for foreign and domestic policy, for enlightened governance based on Kennedy's own idea that a nation should not be "afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market." Jeff Golden has constructed a fine work of historical and political imagination. Unafraid, like As If We Were Grownups, should be required reading for political candidates and voters alike.

If Kennedy had lived. It sounds like science fiction, which it's not; historical fiction which it is. Jeff Golden uses this fascinating literary vehicle to offer a rounded and imaginatively revisited picture of President John Kennedy, as a man, as a leader, and as a visionary in the service of the kind of world that is still possible and to the kind of out-of-the-box leader we so desperately need. Kudos to Golden for this compelling blend of fact and fiction.