THE UNMOORING by Ken Fireman, with Barb Mantel

About THE UNMOORING:

America is at war in Vietnam. And the McMaster family is at war over the war — and much more.

Michael McMaster believes his power-couple parents have grown complacent, forgetting the progressive impulses that once inspired them. His parents — foreign policy mandarin Alan and writer-politico Anna — believe their son is committing the folly of the young, spurning their wisdom on to how to change a fundamentally conservative society.

The Unmooring traces Michael’s journey as he rejects his family’s lifestyle, falls in love with a talented black actress, and becomes a politically engaged journalist. The journey takes Michael from the front lines of the civil rights struggle to the battlefields of Vietnam and the upheavals of 1968. It is a landscape like today’s, scarred by polarization, social conflict, official deceit and generational tensions. Michael’s journey challenges his capacity to grasp America’s deep racial fissures and tests the love he and his wife Riva feel for each other — especially when a tragedy forces Riva to re-examine the premises of her life.

As the era closes, both son and father face life-defining choices — and take sharply divergent paths.

About the author:

Ken Fireman is well-suited to tell the story that unfolds in The Unmooring. As a young activist, he participated in many of the events narrated in the novel, from civil rights demonstrations to the 1967 march on the Pentagon and the street protests at the 1968 Democratic convention. He went on to a career as a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, Newsday and Bloomberg News, covering wars and upheaval in Russia and the Persian Gulf and the inner workings of Washington as a White House and Pentagon correspondent. A former resident of Queens, he and his wife, Susan Benkelman, now live in the Washington, D.C., area.

NOTE: A ticket purchase is required for admission. You may redeem your ticket at the event for $5 off any book (such as a signed copy of THE UNMOORING).

**This is a masked event!