Finale — Thomas Mallon

Before there was Reagan the conservative icon, there was Reagan the president: genial, unknowable, faced with doubters, scandals, and the final throes of the Cold War. In this extraordinary novel, Thomas Mallon takes us to the tense, high-stakes months in 1986 when -- with the Iran-Contra affair, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev -- Reagan and those around him were shaping history. We see Nancy Reagan -- brooding, protective, consulting her astrologist at every turn. We see the young Christopher Hitchens -- his incisive, acerbic voice lending a powerful counterpoint to events as they unfold. And we see Reagan himself: apparently warm but in fact distant and mercurial, by turns seeming to know more than he lets on and let on more than he knows. Written with impeccable language and savage wit, Finale is historical fiction of the highest order, brilliantly rendering the human drama behind these famous -- and familiar -- faces.