The Pledge
A Novel
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A foreign correspondent is targeted by the US government after aligning with the Communist Party for a controversial story
In what many consider his most autobiographical novel, bestselling author Howard Fast revisits the McCarthy-era anticommunist witch hunts he endured during his years as a member of the Communist Party. In The Pledge, Bruce Bacon, a war correspondent stationed in Bengal near the end of World War II, investigates a terrible famine that has left millions in India starving to death, despite ample food supplies stored—and allegedly withheld—by the British. Seeking to tell his story back in New York, Bacon meets members of a communist organization, including a Daily Worker reporter named Molly Maguire. But the America he returns to is not the same one he left behind, and soon Bacon discovers that associating with communists has put him squarely in the crosshairs of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
This suspenseful and powerful novel revisits the guilt-by-association fear and suspicion that gripped America during the second Red Scare, which had harrowing consequences for those unfortunate enough to be accused.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author's estate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fast, whose many bestselling novels have made him an American institution, writes here of a situation with personal overtones. A left-wing activist during his youth, Fast denounced the Communist Party in the 1940s, but rather than testify before the witch-hunting HUAC, he served a jail term during the '50s. The protagonist of this novel is foreign correspondent Bruce Bacon. After covering WW II in Europe, he goes to India where he witnesses a horrible famine in Bengaldue, he is told by everyone, including the Communist journalist who shows him the horrors firsthandto the British, who would rather see millions of Indians die than allow them to greet the Japanese as liberators. Back in the States, Bacon takes a leave of absence from the New York Trib to write a book about his experiences. Asked to speak to a group later identified as a Communist-front organization, he meets feisty, articulate Molly Maguire, a writer for the Daily Worker , and falls in love with her. Nothing in Bruce's politically innocent, upper-middle-class WASP background has prepared him for Molly's ``shanty Irish'' world, or for the ordeal that awaits him as he is caught in the mounting anti-red hysteria. Called before the HUAC, he is cited for contempt; he loses his job; his book is refused by publishers; eventually he is sentenced to jail. And a further tragic irony awaits. Fast's narrative sense has never been stronger, the dialogue has verve and creditability, and red-haired Molly is one of his most memorable creations. Deftly, avoiding stridency, he captures the McCarthy-era atmosphere of suspicion and betrayal. More than compelling fiction, this engrossing novel carries a message of what can happen when democracy is subverted by demogogues.
