The Chafings of Mortals — James Naiden

The years 1999 through 2004 were momentous for the United States and the world - events seen then as significant are still resonant. At the beginning of his career, American journalist Simon Winter gets an assignment to interview his future wife, although he doesn't realize it at first. She's a young model, her face replicated everywhere. But she stays with him, not straying to someone else. Winter is then sent on assignment to Kosovo and later Iraq. He gets to interview the famous and infamous - Rudy Guiliani, George W. Bush, Bill Bradley, novelist John Dufresne, Tony Blair, among others. James Naiden depicts Simon Winter vividly through all this tumult, love, and war. The Chafings of Mortals is not unlike the best of Michael Crichton or Nicholas Monsarrat or Graham Greene, who all wrote of life as love and turmoil ending in death, bittersweet in memory. In this absorbing, fast-paced short novel with many scenes and moods, Naiden has crafted a quite believable story in this venerable tradition.