Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2010
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Two men: One discovers the cost of keeping secrets, of building a career within a government agency where secrets are the operational basis. Noel Leonard works for the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center, mapping coordinates for military actions halfway around the world. One morning he learns that an error in his office is responsible for the bombing of a school in Afghanistan. And he knows suddenly that he is as alone as he is wrong.
From his windowless office in DC to an intelligence conference in Switzerland, and back to his daughter s college in Virginia, Noel claws his way toward a more personally honest life in which he can tell his family everything every day.
Another man learns that family secrets have kept him from who he is and from the ineluctable ways he is attached to a world he has always disdained. This unnamed narrator, a cartographer, is the son of a career diplomat whose activities in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and then in Europe during the Cold War may not have been what they were said to be. He, too, travels to Switzerland, but his quest is not to release himself from secrecy it is to learn how deep the secrets in his own life go. With a voice like John le Carre's and the international sensibility of Graham Greene, Frederick Reuss examines the unavoidably covert nature of lives that make their circles through Washington, DC. A Geography of Secrets is a novel of the time from an acclaimed author who knows the lay of the land.
"An understated but masterly work for fans of cosmopolitan, contemplative, contemporary prose." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Frederick Reuss is the author of Horace Afoot, Henry of Atlantic City, The Wasties, and Mohr. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.
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