The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

54 NOVEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Veep: The Principal Becomes Personal George Kennedy, SETAF Publishing, 2020, $9.99/e-book, 266 pages. All eyes are on Vice President Alfred Turner as the second term of the Nielsen administration comes to a close. In the second quarter of 2015, Vice President Alfred Turner stuns the political world with his announce- ment that, for family reasons, he will not be a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Turner is now a devoted family man with another plan for his future. He is also in the crosshairs of an extremist move- ment with a well-placed ally in the U.S. Secret Service who is fearful that Turner may yet seek to direct this country’s future. Beyond 1600: From the Inside to the Outside George Kennedy, SETAF Publishing, 2020, $20/paperback, e-book available, 330 pages. Follow protagonist Vice President Alfred Turner through his next career and life transition, that of a private citizen, in Beyond 1600 . The latest in George Kennedy’s political thriller series, Crosshairs, keeps up the same fast-paced rhythm of his previous books, including Attack on a Principal and Veep . This time, however, Turner is outside the White House, moving toward the launch of his foundation. Yet his deep commitment to building a viable institution is soon tested with the election of a new president whose policies are xenophobic and isolationist. Former colleagues, friends and family are now looking to Turner to challenge him. Will he give up his private-sector aspirations, and throw his hat in the ring for the 2020 presidential election? Blue Country Mark Wentling, Page Publishing, 2019, $16.95/paperback, e-book available, 204 pages. Set in the mid-20th century, Blue Coun- try is the tale of Juan Eduardo de Mejia, a dying prisoner who shares his lifetime memories with a rat called “Savior” who lives in the walls of his jail cell. Juan regales Savior with tales about his father, Ernesto, a well-respected doctor who saved a poor community from catastrophe when floodwa- ters invaded their homeland of Sinoteca decades earlier. In a series of flashbacks to his childhood, Juan shares memories of Sinoteca’s rich history and tells of Ernesto’s marriage to Elena Portillo Del Campo, Juan’s mother. Juan’s birth led to the tragic death of Elena, a woman Juan “never knew but idolized.” Ernesto was so traumatized by the death of his wife that he fell into a coma, but was nonetheless nominated to run for president of their home country, Catrasia. Juan’s jail sentence is left unexplained until the last third of the book. He shares how he was raised by a foster family in the mountains surrounding Sinoteca and was renamed as Antonio Gomez to protect him against his father’s enemies. As an adult, Juan becomes a schoolteacher, relocating to Sinoteca Valley where he advocates for the poor in defiance of Sinoteca’s new dictatorship. A former USAID mission director, Mark Wentling has more than 50 years of experience in the development and humanitarian assistance fields. Blue Country , his fifth book, follows four novels detailing the African experience. See p. 41 for his Africa Memoir: 50 Years and 54 Countries (Volume 1: Algeria–Liberia) , also published this year. Caleb Johnson: Mountain Man: Back To Bear Creek: A Frontier Western Adventure Charles Ray, independently published, 2020, $4.99/paperback, e-book available, 120 pages. Caleb Johnson, a Black mountain man, saves former Confederate officer Ben Winthrop from a lynch mob. He then guides Ben from Colorado to Oregon and spends two years there helping him start a ranch. But Caleb wants to get back to his