Dewey Defeats Truman

Description

A masterful retelling of a legend and famous headline of modern American history-Harry Truman's upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election. Set in Dewey's hometown of Owosso, Michigan, this is the captivating story of a local love triangle that mirrors the national election contest. As the voters must decide between the candidates, so must Anne Macmurray choose between two suitors- an ardent United Auto Workers organizer and his polar opposite, a wealthy young Republican lawyer who's running for the state senate. Weaving a tapestry of small-town secrets, the people of Owosso ready themselves for the fame that is bound to shower down upon them after Dewey's "sure thing" victory. But as the novel-and history-move toward election night, we watch the townspeople, along with Anne and her suitors, have their fates rearranged in a climax filled with suspense, chagrin and unexpected joy.

Thomas Mallon is the author of eight novels, including Henry and Clara, Fellow Travelers, and Watergate. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and other publications.

Praise for Thomas Mallon's Dewey Defeats Truman: "A warm, touching, and richly textured novel; a classic American movie filmed in glorious prose deluxe." -Entertainment Weekly "A finely textured web. . . . Like Shakespeare's summery comedies, the novel is about love's madness. . . . Effortlessly summons the feel of a bygone era. . . . A lovely meditation on the interplay between past and present." -Jay Parini, The New York Times Book Review "Charming . . . Mallon is a master of detail about a place and a time." -Chicago Tribune "A beautifully written and absorbing novel, with richly drawn characters and a wealth of bubbling plots." -Detroit Free Press "It's fueled by a sense of period detail so strong that reading it seems at times like paging through an old high school yearbook . . . I enjoyed the wit and precision with which Mallon presents this world." -Boston Sunday Globe "Thomas Mallon is a smart, inventive, prolific writer . . . What interests him is not history per se but the way in which large events touch and alter the lives of ordinary, unknown people." -The Washington Post "Mallon's prose is always rich and economical. . . . Dewey Defeats Truman is the kind of novel that restores meaning to the present by recovering the past." -San Francisco Chronicle "[A] beautifully controlled novel. . . . Mallon has so meticulously re-created a time and place that even trivial data has the force of nothing less than truth. . . . Mallon's complicated meditation on the trials of private and public identity is beautifully fashioned. Its tale of yesteryear tells America a little bit about what it is today." -Publishers Weekly