Back Channel by Stephen L. Carter

Back Channel Reviews

• 
  switterbug (Betsey)

  This is my fourth novel by Carter that I’ve read, my favorite being his last book, THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I enjoyed his revisionist history of Abe Lincoln and the thorny disputes and complexities of abolition and economics, as well as the passionate way he evoked the Executive decision-making. The premise, whereby Lincoln survived Booth’s assassination attempt, was of course, fiction, but otherwise, it was entirely plausible and filled with historical truths and events. Here, Carter is at it again, reimagining events, while keeping aspects of historical background credible.
  
  Set amidst the Cold War and Kennedy’s crucial, pivotal days in negotiating with the Russians, the eponymous title refers to a covert conduit between Kennedy and Khruschev, a secret avenue of communication and negotiation that was initiated in order to avert full-scale war with the Russians. Carter, whose love for chess is used both literally and figuratively here, as in many of his novels, does a superb job of keeping the stand-off tense, one move at a time, even though we know how it turned out historically. (And, in his editor’s note, he reveals that there was a back channel, although not with a nineteen-year-old black, female college student).
  
  The preponderance of the novel was centered on the chosen student, Margo Jensen, the comely 19-year-old sophomore at Cornell. Although it is difficult to swallow that a young, inexperienced college student was the conduit for these secret negotiations, Carter succeeded in making me root for her. Through progressively perilous experiences, Margo loses her innocence and cultivates a refinement in the game of espionage, a trait that appears to be in her blood. The backstory of her father, an unsung hero of the Great War, adds suspense and excitement.
  
  The editor’s note or afterward is a pleasure, allowing the reader a bit of insight into the author’s technique and design for his story—the wending of fact and fiction. If you are already a Carter fan, you will likely enjoy this book. If you’ve never read him before, and are intrigued by “faction,” I would recommend reading THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN first, a more convincing alteration of historical events.
• 
  Matt

  Carter renews his powerful writing style in another novel thick with history and strong on intrigue. In the midst of the most frigid part of the Cold War, college student Margo Jensen is targeting by White House officials to aid her country in a covert mission, one that might have dire implications. She soon finds herself in Bulgaria, tasked with determining if she can garner information about the Soviets' plans to send nuclear missiles into Cuba facing directly facing towards Washington. Returning sooner than she'd hoped, Margo discovers that her involvement is all but over. After the missiles appear and both sides refuse to stand down, Margo is again chosen to act on behalf of her country, this time passing messages from the President of the United States through to a contact who has the ear of General Secretary Khrushchev, all through top secret back channels, in hopes of averting nuclear war. Margo finds herself embroiled in the most serious game of 'chicken' imageable, with only one way out; to ensure both sides trust one another at a time when trust does not exist. With a 'war party' in both camps, the hopes for peace may be stifled if she cannot deliver crucial information from one camp to the other. In her dealings with those in the upper echelon of White House politics, she soon finds herself in the most compromising of positions, fighting to save her reputation, as well as the lives of all her countrymen. While history knows how the story will play out, Carter hands the reader a powerfully crafted tale with numerous nuances to help strengthen the story and narrative, Carter keeps the reader on their toes through to the end, as the denouement moves forward and the truth behind the headlines comes to life.
  
  It is not the historical undertones alone that keeps the story moving at a quick pace, but the small details that helps flesh out the larger storyline. Margo, as a young African American woman play a pivotal role at a time when race relations will soon erupt. Playing on this and the scandal that might follow, Carter utilises this in a novel of espionage and secrecy to depict some of the most important days of the Cold War. Little more can be said about how close the world came to the brink of annihilation, but Carter finds a new narrative to tell the tale and present a wonderful sub-plot that keeps the reader interested from the get-go. With a cast of well-known characters from the time period, Carter keeps the story real and pushes the limits only in the slightest ways in order to tell this story, which does not have a happy ending for all involved. Even in his epilogue, he hints that this work of fiction may be anything but, save a slew of name changes.
  
  Kudos, Mr. Carter for another wonderful novel, full of history and intrigue, while also forcing the reader to step back and think about the place of race relations during this tumultuous time.
• 
  Monte Price

  
  More, in real time, thoughts can be found in this vlog
  
  The Kennedy era with the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically feels like a hot time period for lots of people that want to craft stories. There are so many movies and books that cover this time period, but this is the one that's for me. I loved every second I spent watching Margot go from the Cornell campus to behind the Iron Curtain to being back stateside and still finding herself face to face with Soviet Intelligence Assets and having to figure out a way to get out of the situation that she finds herself in.
  
  I've never read a Jack Reacher or Jack Ryan or Bond or whoever book, but I felt that this scratches a similar itch for me that all of those do for so many other readers. Only here our main character isn't some super skilled former military person, she's a regular girl from around the way that is both in over her head but also wanting to be like her father and be an asset to her country when her country is asking too much of her. In some ways it's also her learning that in allowing herself to be used in this way it can go sideways, and even if it doesn't she is going to have to spend the rest of her life worrying about things that so many other people her same age are never going to think twice about.
  
  It was cold war perfection, easily one of the books by Carter that felt cinematic in a way that felt like I had been robbed of something by never having had the opportunity to watch a miniseries version of the events that had me in a choke hold to read about.
• 
  Donna

  Incredibly far-fetched. Now I usually don't mind that and I am happily willing to go along with it when it is substantiated by events and character actions. This story missed those opportunities. It was like living on that little island in
  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Your strolling along and suddenly a big ole meatball falls from the sky like it belongs there....um.....no.
  
  For my crazy analytical mind, it was too improbable. This kept me at arms length. I just couldn't embrace this. But on a positive note, I liked some of the author's descriptive strokes.
• 
  Steven Z.

  Whether reading Stephen L. Carter’s THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK and the novels that follow that genre to his historical novel, THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN I have always felt very satisfied and contented when completing one of his books. After reading his latest effort at altering American history by recreating a fictional account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in BACK CHANNEL, I did not complete my reading with the same feeling. To his credit Mr. Carter has complete command of the events that led up to the 1962 crisis, the diplomatic machinations between the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as the domestic pressure that was exerted within each government. In a useful afterword, Carter explains the differences between his version of events and those that actually occurred allowing the reader to compare the two, and hopefully emerge with an accurate accounting for what took place. The book is not even counter-factual history, it is more a fantasy that if you were not cognizant of actual events then you might fall into the trap and be engrossed with the plot. It was difficult to accept the story line that Carter creates at the outset those American intelligence officials would employ a nineteen year old, black college student at Cornell University as a companion for chess champion Bobby Fischer at a competition in Varna, Bulgaria. It seems at a previous match the Soviet champion had told Fischer that in Varna he would provide further information about Soviet intentions in Cuba. From this point on the college student, Margo Jensen is involved in a whirlwind of espionage that will lead her to become the back channel conduit between Alexandr Fomin, a KGB Colonel, representing Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and President John F. Kennedy. For those familiar with actual events you will remember there was a back channel during the crisis as Mr. Fomin met with ABC News reporter John Scali. The substitution of Miss Jensen for Scali and the narrative that the author creates does not create a gripping tale for this reader.
  
  Jensen meets a number of interesting characters in her journey ranging from State Department intelligence types, CIA agents, KGB Counter Intelligence officers, along with important historical figures like McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s National Security advisor and others. We witness Jensen’s growth from an untrained college student in the art of espionage to one who will amaze those who have to deal with her. The plot thickens as the missiles are discovered and the Soviet Union and the United States are brought to the brink of war. On the Soviet side we meet Viktor Borisovich Vaganian, a KGB Captain in Counter Intelligence who is trying to discover who on the Soviet side leaked the information identifying what Moscow hoped to accomplish in Cuba. His ally is a rogue American who is working for a domestic group that believes that Kennedy does not have the back bone to deal with the Russians.
  
  As the book evolves the Cuban Missile Crisis is recounted with a number of historical details that are missing, rearranged, or created anew as it becomes clear that there is a war party in the United States who want to use the crisis as a vehicle to destroy the Soviet Union while the United States held the military advantage. In the Soviet Union, Khrushchev must deal with his own war party who favors striking during the crisis because they believe that if the opportunity is allowed to pass they will have lost any hope of defeating the United States whose technological future was much brighter than Moscow. Each war party tries to undo the back channel that involves Jensen, putting herself and those involved with her in repeated danger.
  
  To Carter’s credit we are taken inside the Ex Comm national security meetings in Washington and the viewpoints of the participant run fairly close to what actually occurred. The rendering of Generals Maxwell Taylor and Curtis Le May seems to hit the spot as are the views of Robert Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara and others. Once the crisis is settled Carter presents two scenes that ring very true for the future. In a conversation between Bundy and Kennedy, the president now satisfied the crisis is over turns his attention to what should be done about Vietnam as the administration begins to gear up for the 1964 election. Secondly we witness a conversation between a CIA type, who Carter describes as a “traveling salesman of the clandestine world,” and Jensen, who is afraid what Kennedy’s domestic enemies might do in the future, the intelligence agent states that, “Still, if I were president, I suppose I’d watch my back.” A strong reference to future conspiracy theories involving those who felt Kennedy was soft on Cuba leading to his assassination in 1963.
  
  There are other moments in the narrative that move away from the crisis and involve Jensen’s family, particularly her father who was killed during World War II. She learns that he was a hero and was blown up in order to avoid being captured by the Nazis as he ran agents during the war, and did not die, as she was previously led to believe in a motor vehicle accident. The issue of course was that he was black, and the intelligence community did not employ such people during the war. Because of this slight, Carter presents Jensen as the daughter who carries on her father’s work and her tenaciousness and character stem from his DNA. We also meet other characters from Carter’s previous novels, i.e.; her grandmother, Claudia Jensen, Major Madison, Jack Ziegler, Vera Madison, and Agent Stilwell among others. They are all integrated seamlessly and fit into the story line nicely.
  
  The story began in a Conflict Theory class at Cornell taught by a former/current spy named Lorenz Nieymeyer and his prize student Margo Jensen. Their relationship formed a secondary plot that is evident throughout the narrative as Margo is confronted with an adventure she never could have expected. In an area of the book’s strength, Carter allows their personal and intellectual relationship to evolve and he closes his story by having the two meet, this time Miss Jensen holds the moral and intellectual high ground, and because of her ordeal she held her former professor in much lower esteem. Had Carter written a novel centering more about their relationship with the Cuban Missile Crisis in the back ground it might have made for a stronger narrative and a more believable one?
  
• 
  Laurielib

  It's Fall of 1962 and the Kennedy White House is embroiled in the Cuban Missile. It's only recently that we learned how close this brought us to a nuclear abyss. Stephen L. Carter takes this historical backdrop and crafts a riveting thriller you won't be able to put down. Margo Jensen is a 19 year old black student at Cornell who travels from Bulgaria to Washington, DC as the vulnerable "back channel" operating outside the official investigation. All the political players including Kennedy and even Khrushchev are so well crafted. Carter's background as a Yale law professor shines as he weaves principles of "conflict theory" and negotiation into the personalities of the "hawks" and "doves" in the White House war room. But Margo is the the character you hate to lose as the book races to its climatic, breath taking end. My only very minor hesitation is Carter's depiction of Abigail as librarian like including a "librarian's disapproving stare". As a librarian I always take umbrage at any author's anachronistic characterization of librarians.
• 
  Ashlei A.K.A Chyna Doll

  I was happy with this book. (It says based on true events) but it just seemed a Lil on the UNBELIVEABLE side...
  I just was not sold on the whole premis of the story... But I was happy with the story as a whole..
  It was full of twists and turns, and lots of action(a Lil more then I could imagine a young black woman could get away with... She has a white BF but it's the 60's!! They even mention the freedom riders, and marches... What for this girls fine... Just seemed a Lil unreal...)
  
  But I would read something from Mr. Stephen L Carter again
• 
  Jaksen

  Solid book, fully-detailed, well-written. The characters are authentic, the dialogue realistic, the historical information spot on. (I was a child at this time but there are things I remember well, such as my grandmother informing me in October that we were going to have 'another war', and as such, our Christmas wouldn't be quite as elaborate as usual. (Our way of cutting back, I suppose.)
  
  But basically it's the story of a 'colored' girl used as a back channel for secret negotiations between President Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev, in October-November of 1962. I loved the concept, and the MC? Female. African American. And a teenager. Using as a cover the fact that she and Kennedy were having an affair. And all this in an espionage-political thriller. (Is there a genre for that? What's not to like?) There's no one the girl can trust, or can she? And there are war and dove factions on both sides of the issue. There are 'real' characters in the book, along with fictitious ones - Bobby Fisher's in there - and all the parts pull together for an excellent read.
  
  Can't say enough about it. I plan to look for more of Carter's other works.
  
  I received a copy of this book through the goodreads giveaway program.
• 
  John Chabalko

  This was recommended by a friend of a friend. These revisionist historical fiction novels are not my bag of oats; that said, the premise was sort of interesting so i forced myself to finish it.
  
  I wish there'd been better character development early on. It didn't really happen at all except for some odd observations that seem to be catered more towards an evening TV show treatment than a novel - even at the end of the book i couldn't find myself caring about any of the characters and i just wanted it to be over.
  
  If you're big on the genre or carter specifically give it a go, otherwise - pass.
• 
  Bettie

  
  Amb. Burns: Trump’s kindness towards Putin seen as weakness by Russians As a former U.S Ambassador to Russia, William Burns witnessed first-hand the personality and working style of Russian President Vladimir Putin. From his standpoint, President Trump’s tendency to placate Putin is perceived as weakness to the Russian leader, not strength. Amb. Burns, the author of a new book, talks with Brian Williams about this new era of diplomacy.
• 
  Jeanne

  Great story of an amazing young woman asked to serve her country in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Margo Jensen is an unsuspecting player, but what a strong lead character Mr Carter has developed this story around. Amazing facts come out in the end, making for the strong close I enjoy! 7 out of 10 for me this time around!
• 
  Tim

  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and its unconventional young main character. 9 of 10 stars
• 
  Ruth Chatlien

  I would call this a cross between Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The West Wing. It was an enjoyable read.
• 
  Lisa Gray

  I absolutely love Carters books and this one about the Cuban Missile crisis is no exception. It’s a great way to learn about a historical event in the context of a fictional story.
• 
  Leo Walsh

  I had high hopes for the political thriller "Back Channel." The premise is an intriguing: alternate-historical retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead of the historically verifiable back-channel -- ABC News correspondent John Scali -- author Stephen L. Carter inserts Cornell sophomore Margo Jensen as the back channel. That Margo is African-American in pre-Civil Rights Act America promised to add real spice. And when you realize that the cover Margo employs to get her messages to JFK is posing as one of his numerous dalliances, I was stoked.
  
  Problem is, the novel falls apart in execution.
  
  The most interesting angles that would have added realistic tension to the tale -- racism, being humiliated publicly as a Kennedy-girl -- are ignored. In fact, Margo's race adds nothing to the tale. It feels tacked on. Especially since Carter chooses to make her family upper-class, related to a former New York Lieutenant Governor. So Margo lives like old-money, talks like old-money, acts like old-money and even goes to school at the Ivy League Cornell -- just like old-money.
  
  What's more, Margo is not subjected to racism which I found unbelievable. There is no institutional bias against her skin color. In 1961. During an era where Jim Crow reigned down south. And real estate agents through much of the north red-lined blacks, excluding them from renting homes in certain areas. The only bias Margo runs up against at Cornell is gender, with her shady government professor telling her that woman never get A's in his class. She's even accepted into an all-white, upper-class, mostly-male study group. And listened to as an equal. And when Margo begins working as a CIA operative, the objection to her is her age, innocence and lack of training.
  
  Not a single racial slur in sight. It's as if Carter wants us to think that America was color-blind in 1962. And that the white southerners who lives in DC back then possess the same racial tolerance and politically-correct admonitions against slurring black folk as exist today.
  
  I had problems buying this. For all the dramatic possibilities a black female protagonist offered, Carter could very well have made Margo white without losing dramatic effect.
  
  There are also some plotting problems. There are often long, drawn-out conversations among the intelligence community that give the backstory of the Missile Crisis. And once the missiles are established, a lot of detail about the factions in the cabinet, etc. And the dissonance the back channel was producing by keeping the hawks and the doves apart. I think Carter meant those to dramatize how Kennedy saved the day by holding the middle. By not allowing the hawks to swoop or the doves to offer olive branches before he had clear-enough facts. But instead, they made me bleary-eyed, and thinking "Get back to Margo!"
  
  But all my griping aside, I do have to say I enjoyed Margo as a character. She's smart. She's poised. And given what she's up against without training, is the "strongest" character in the novel. Even the admirable JFK pales in comparison. Which is a mark in Carter's favor. But despite how much I loved Margo -- and her interactions with her handlers and Khrushchev's go-between Fomin, all seasoned intelligence pros, where she holds her own -- were not enough to save the novel for me.
  
  All in all, the White House "backstory" and polite political intrigue distracted from Margo's story. And by avoiding the drama the premise promised -- having tabloids out Margo as a new "Kennedy Girl" and racism juicing up the story and acting as obstacles in her way -- Carter presents a well-written, exhaustively-researched but ultimately tepid political thriller.
  
  Two stars. Which I think may be a tad too low here, but the hover on Goodreads tells me that two-stars means "It was okay." So I gotta go with my gut.
• 
  Jill Meyer

  Many of the previous reviewers of Stephen Carter's new novel, "Back Channel", remarked on Carter's strange choice to make his protagonist a 19 year old Cornell student. A brilliant, beautiful, and persevering young woman, but, none-the-less, a 19 year old woman. If you, as the reader, can get past this detail, then I am sure you'll enjoy "Back Channel", a novel which takes place during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I was not able to get past this detail, but I still enjoyed the book. Would the plot have been any more believable if the protagonist, Margo Jensen, had been 29, not 19? Maybe, maybe...
  
  Stephen Carter has written several previous novels. The early ones - and there were two in particular, "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and "New England White" - were peopled by wealthy African-Americans, of a group I've heard referred to as "The Talented Tenth". His next couple of books were espionage/spy tales that I felt other authors wrote better. I wrote in a review of "Jericho's Fall" that, "okay, Stephen Carter had written the espionage book he felt he had to write, so let's get back to the ones he wrote so much better." His latest book before this one, "The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln" was a revisionist history of Lincoln's "impeachment", after the attempt to assassinate him failed. That book also starred a beautiful, brilliant, and persevering young African-American woman. Now we have the same young lady, again saving the union. Or maybe it is her great-granddaughter...
  
  Anyway, October 1962 was a challenging time for the US and the USSR. Carter's plot is not much more believable than his characters, but, and here's the thing, Stephen Carter is an excellent writer. He makes the mundane and scarcely plausible, seem strangely plausible. Were there really Soviet agents chasing around Varna, Bulgaria and Ithaca, New York, in search of "back channels" between the Kremlin and the White House? Were the CIA and the KGB working together to make the idea of nuclear war between the two superpowers an impossibility? Did they both use Kennedy's not-so-well-known-at-the-time sexual rendezvous with young women to set up "back channel" negotiations? Well, hell, I don't know, but Stephen Carter has written a fairly good story using those plot points.
  
  So, if you enjoy Stephen Carter's writing - and I do - you'll enjoy his latest book. But, again, I'd like to ask him to drop the espionage stuff and write again about the "Talented Tenth". Any hack could have written "Back Channel", but few other writers could have written "The Emperor of Ocean Park".
• 
  Roger

  Once again, an excellent effort by Carter, who has become one of my favorite authors. Having lived through the Cuban missile crisis, I know lots about this era. Granted, I was only 11, but I lived in the suburbs of Washington DC, and was majorly impacted by these events. Having read much about it in subsequent years, I knew some of what Carter was using in his novel was true. In fact, in an end piece he explains what was true, what was stretched and what was invented for the book. I love how he has strong black women in almost all his novels. I'm assuming that's because he grew up surrounded by them, but I have too encountered strong black women and find them fascinating and brilliant.
• 
  Ray Dan Parker

  I am now a major fan of Stephen L. Carter, Yale law professor and renowned historian. Back Channel follows the harrowing exploits of Margo Jensen, a nineteen-year-old African American coed at Cornell, who becomes embroiled in sensitive negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. She nearly loses her life and finds her reputation tarnished as a rumored mistress of Kennedy. This is a fast moving piece with enough historical background and insight into such political figures as McGeorge Bundy to keep the reader wondering whether this is actually fiction or fact.
• 
  David Ketelsen

  This is an amazing book. Back Channel crackles with energy as Stephen L. Carter develops an alternative history plot that startles the reader and yet seems all too plausible. The protagonist, 19-year old Cornell sophomore Margo Jensen, is an unlikely person to form the back channel between Khrushchev and JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis but her naivete and spunk is what really fuels the book. The dialog rings true, the characters all feel real, and the historic backdrop is dramatic and accurate. Back Channel is a must read.
• 
  James Fant

  Carter didn’t waste any time getting to the meat of the matter and the heat of the ensuing battle between two superpowers. We land in the room with President Kennedy and Margo Jensen. We know she’s young. She’s African American. We know she’s not completely comfortable with that part of the plan, a plan of which we don’t know the specifics in the beginning. But we know the plan, whatever it is, is vital to the survival of thousands, if not millions of people. Every chapter, paragraph, and word pushed the story forward. No wasted text. No drag from backstories when given.
  
  We know the surrounding players but we don’t know for sure if they’re protagonists or antagonists. This holds our eyes and ears because we eagerly want to know who’s with Margo and who’s against her. Who wants to stop World War III and who wants the bombs to drop now, as is written in the book, rather than later. Though a work of fiction, there’s a gripping reality in this novel. You get a sense of what it might have felt like in
  ‘62. The emptying of the cities and the grocers’ shelves. The fear. Fall out shelters. The reality that bunkers may not be all that effective. Carter holds you there and doesn’t let you go until the last word.
  
  Margo Jensen is a masterfully crafted character. I can clearly see the magnetism which would attract an old professor, spies, assassins, and White House executives to her gifts. Bahni Turpin’s narration goes from Margo’s sweetness and sharpness, to Kennedy’s Boston Brahmin, to Bobby Fischer’s arrogant whining, to Agatha Milner’s mousiness and the mysterious darkness hidden behind it, to the ruggedness of Russian phonology. It’s like she becomes each person. How she does it, I do not know. But I loved it.
  
  Overall, a great work of fiction which depicts something very real and scary. Five Stars EASY!!! Now, I’m reading my next Stephen L. Carter novel “New England White”. So far, so great!
• 
  Ben

  Another Chapters bargain pick-up that turned out really well! $7 well spent :)
  
  I actually quite liked Back Channel by Stephen L. Carter. The idea of an international Cold War spy thriller centring on an almost-teenage student who also happens to be a woman of colour was a great idea.
  
  Carter's writing was clear, easy to follow, but yet suspenseful and engaging. There were times when I had no clue who the real enemy was, or what was going to happen next. The portrayal of Kennedy was a bit weak, but presented an interesting view of a distracted president in a time of great potential peril. The notion that academics could be so involved in international politics was also quite interesting, and something I assume would be more impactful for an American audience afraid of who controls government and fear of the upper classes, etc.
  
  I'm glad I read this book, it was a good change from Tom Clancy-esque Cold War thrillers and had some memorable characters making the genre seem fun again. I would read another book by Carter.
• 
  Gabriel

  An interesting fictional speculation based on true facts during the cold war.
  
  The author is trying to present us with some possible motives and possible answers to the questions of why or how so key players at that time did what ever they did - the public eye saw only whatever was intended for the general public, but in fact why and how it happened is not always so clear - well, this book is trying to answer some of those type of questions and I think this is an interesting approach.
  
  However, the pace of the story is kind of slow and you'll need some patience to go trough it - or I might be bias, since I'm used with more fast paces super-action stories.
  
  Nonetheless, whoever is interested in finding more about those times and some of the events back then, can enjoy this book
  
• 
  Lisa

  What a fabulous piece of historical fiction! A spy thriller with a string female lead that actually happened except the important clues to this woman’s identity have been changed to protect her privacy. Why we bother to elect a president is beyond me as it seems that the president actually has very little control, although in this novel JFK was able to keep a lid on the powers that be until an acceptable solution to avoid war could be found for both the Soviets and Americans.
  Extremely well written that held my attention. If you read with audiobooks, Bahni Turpin has the best range of voices and accents bar none.
• 
  Dean Cummings

  As I began reading Back Channel, the one thing I was looking forward to was the dialogue between the protagonist, 19 year old Margo Jensen and President John F. Kennedy. I was so pleased with Carter's handling of these scenes. I was captured by by the combination of grand scale and accessibility that Carter was able to achieve. I learned so much about this critical chapter in twentieth century history, while being very entertained! A tremendous book, I imagine I'll read it again sometime in the future!
• 
  Dave

  A very entertaining novel about The Cuban Missile Crisis.
  October, 1962. The Soviet Union is putting missiles in Cuba.
  President Kennedy is being pressured to respond with force.
  Behind the scenes a 'Back Channel' of communication is set up between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
  A 19 year old college student at Cornell is chosen to be part of that Back Channel..
  As other reviewers have noted, the story seems a tad unbelievable at times.
  But it is super entertaining and enjoyable.
  It moves fast and keeps you involved in the story.
• 
  Doug Schaefer

  This book sucked me in and helped me get through the first day after testing positive for Covid-19. It tells the story of a back channel of communication between Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis through clandestine meetings with a black female Cornell student who used the ruse of an affair with Kennedy for cover. It’s loosely based on real events, although the real back channel was through a white male ABC news reporter. It’s an exciting, fast paced story, and it’s nice having a main character who isn’t the standard young white male action hero. This was a great read.
• 
  Frances

  Spy/action novels generally aren't my thing; I read this for a book group. AND LOVED IT. This novel won't change your life, but is 100% pure entertainment. I actively looked forward to my commute because I was so eager to learn what was going to happen next.
  
  I particularly liked:
  that the protagonist was a young woman of color.
  that Kennedy wasn't blindly lionized.
  that Carter wrote women so well--it's hard to find men who write women characters convincingly.
  
  Definitely recommend!
  
  
• 
  Anne Muskin

  An interesting read, sometimes very repetitive and does a lot of telling vs showing in the writing. However, many redeeming qualities as well. Loved all the strong female characters and how dimensional they were. I liked learning a bit more about this time in history, but for me this dragged quite a bit and it was hard at times to suspend belief and stay in the story.