Author's Note Regarding "All The Dark We Will Not See"

All the Dark We Will Not See is a historical novel based on a true story that takes us back to 1984 Washington, D.C. It allows us to live a life both profound and pedestrian, yet frighteningly real, and at times, even surreal. The foundational circumstance is the aftermath of a major corporate siege that overthrew the city and planted its flags in full view of the Reagan White House. Many of us who worked in Washington watched it happen with a predictable sense of awe and foreboding. We all had tales to tell, tales that few outside the city would ever believe.

When the novel was first conceived many years later, serious issues presented themselves for consideration, first and foremost being point of view. It would be relatively simple to create a White House character for purposes of observing insider intrigue and criminality--a Reagan apostle like Peggy Noonan, for example. But given my own experience in the bowels of the Executive, and having observed and studied the trickle-down effect of White House psychology and political culture, I realized the story would be better served by adopting the viewpoint of those who were a few degrees removed from the rarefied air of the Oval Office. The story would be told not by characters who wielded power like narcissist sociopaths, but by those who lived daily with the consequences of it, and who either resisted or amplified that power for their own ends.

Everyone in 1984 Washington who opposed the Leviathan, who put their reputations and lives on the line regardless of political affiliation, did so not because they desired glory, but because they still believed in a world where right would win out. Most lived to be terribly disappointed, for "doing the right thing" rarely if ever made a difference during that era--now glossed over by many and made to appear like a Camelot interlude.

Regardless, despite their reversals and the drama played out during those years of turmoil, redemption and hope are found in the knowledge that real heroes struggled to do the right thing for us, however futile that struggle often became. Some succeeded, others failed, but their sacrifices and battles, their enemies and betrayers, as detailed in "All The Dark We Will Not See," reveal an injustice none of us can afford to ignore. As Dostoevsky once said, "Tyranny is a habit, it grows upon us."