Finale
A Novel of the Reagan Years

From the author of the acclaimed novel Watergate comes a galvanizing new novel about the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern timesRonald Reagan. Finale takes listeners to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986, the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev. Along with Soviet dissidents, illegal arms traders, and antinuclear activists, the novels memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley, and even Bette Davis, with whom the president long ago appeared on screen. Several figuresincluding a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reaganbecome the eyes through which listeners see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, a clash of ideologies, and a political revolution. At the center of it allbut forever out of reachis Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates, his children, and the citizens who elected him.