The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2020 53 best friend and former acting Secretary of State, Alfred Turner, is now Nielsen’s veep. As in the first volume (published in 2018), Turner relates the unique challenges confronting the nation’s first female chief executive and describes the partnership he forges with Nielsen to deal with the deadly assaults on their administration by a segment of white men gripped by fear, victimhood and racial animus. George Kennedy is a retired Senior Foreign Service officer whose diplomatic career took him to seven countries and culminated in his appointment as consul general in Toronto. He has kept busy after retirement as a political adviser to several elected officials, an adviser to small- to medium-sized enterprises on opportunities in overseas markets and an independent business owner. He is also the author of a memoir, Cotton Fields to Summits: The View from Contested Ground (SETAF Publishing, 2018), in which he describes his 35-year journey to fulfill a lifelong dream to live life beyond his horizons, and Crosshairs (SETAF Publishing, 2018), the first in a series of alternative historical novels. See the next three entries for the latest installments in this series. In Her Own Right George Kennedy, SETAF Publishing, 2019, $20/paperback, e-book available, 276 pages. In this third volume in the Crosshairs series, Vice President Alfred Turner reprises his role as the official biog- rapher for President Annetta Nielsen, who has now secured a term in her own right. Alfred falls in love with Josephine Branson, widow of the slain former president, who leaves her position of U.S. Attorney Gen- eral to become Nielsen’s new Secretary of State. Conservatives and white male extremist groups, with political cover provided by their Republican allies on Capitol Hill, continue their attacks on the Nielsen administration. An early retirement creates a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and the president honors her commitment to nominate Josephine Branson. The Republican Senate minority leader inadvertently reveals a GOP-backed conspiracy, played out on foreign soil, to topple the Nielsen presidency and derail the presidential ambitions of Vice President Turner. Nielsen, true to her character, confronts this latest challenge to her presidency and models an archetype of presidential leadership for future aspirants to the most powerful office in the world.