Synopsis:
A novel set in a Florida coastal city against the backdrop of the 2016 national election, hurricane Matthew, and a local public referendum to limit building heights and high-rise condominiums on the ocean.
Grassroots citizens fight to overcome power brokers, foreign investors, and the influence of money on local politics. Sara Olson, a native-born activist returning to her ancestral home after 15 unhappy years in New York City, leads the citizen group and it's struggle to retain the community's historic and aesthetic character. She enlists the help of Carson Graham, owner of a new downtown used bookstore, a man who is a fugitive from his own past and his deepest secret.
In a love story for the ages, Sara and Carson take on the world, trying to learn each other secrets while concealing their own, on a journey to new identities, self-understandings, and a common destiny. Based on real life events, The Bookseller's Secret is a tale of two Nine Eleven survivors, the CIA, Russian oligarchs, and the forces controlling politics, money and power in a small Florida city.
Excerpt:
"...Sara's heart raced as she left the bookstore, every fiber of her being certain she had just stood face to face with Michael Riley. Her secret crush, he had died on Nine Eleven with hundreds of her co-workers, or so she had always believed. Now he had reappeared, a cruel apparition. All her instincts screamed it was him. She knew it. She could feel it. Even after 15 years, the man who identified himself as Carson Graham stood the same height, had the same voice, speech, and smile, features aging could not change. The company offices had been near the top of Tower One. None of the people on the floors above the plane's impact survived that morning, only lucky individuals who had been out of the office like Sara, saved by a doctor's appointment. Michael could have been spared by a similar circumstance. If so, why did he take the name Carson Graham?..."
