Legacy / Recessional - Softcover

James A. Michener was one of the world’s most popular writers, the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the bestselling novels The Source, Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Caribbean, and Caravans, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

This timely short novel uses the Iran-contra affair as its point of departure to examine how the Constitution has influenced the United States and its citizens over the years. The central figure is Norman Starr, a West Point graduate and an Army officer whose cloak-and-dagger involvement with Nicaragua rebel activities is to be subjected to Senate investigation. In preparation for his defense, Starr and his lawyer examine Starr's family, attempting to prove the long tradition of patriotism, beginning with Jared Starr, who fought in the Revolutionary War and was involved in the preliminaries for drafting the Constitution. Other Starr family members argued the slavery question and fought for women's suffrage. Michener raises challenging questions in this book about our living Constitution. Essential. Literary Guild dual main selection. Joan Hinkemeyer, Englewood P.L., Col.
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