Escape from America - Softcover

Henley, Wallace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0929292405 ISBN 13: 9780929292403

Publisher: Hannibal Books, 2008

Synopsis

A spine-chilling novel of suspense and intrigue that warns of what America could become.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Could the USA ever become as repressive as the Soviet Union once was? Could the now independent states in the old Soviet Union become what the USA once was "one nation under God?" Wallace Henley, a White House staff assistant during the Nixon administration, sees such a reversal of former roles as a real possibility within the next quarter century. Henley's new novel, Escape from America, illustrates how this could come to pass.

The central character is Alex Bozamov, an idealistic and ambitious young senior editor of Pravda, who is sickened by the Soviet media's sacrifice of truth on the altar of Marxist expediency. Bozamov exposes a political coverup of the Chernobyl disaster and is forced to flee with his wife to the USA, leaving behind his sons which he raised to be good Marxists.

Locating in the nation's capitol, Bozamov becomes a star writer of the "Washington Tribune." Assigned to write a series on dissent in America, he displeases his editor, Taylor Willingham, with a story on a rally of "rescuers."

"The problem of your story," says Willingham, "is that you seem to focus on the issue of abortion as allegedly murder." "That was the theme of the meeting I was sent to cover," Bozamov replies. "These people believe abortion is murder, and that's why they stage these rescues." "But you miss the larger issue," Willingham counters. "These people are denying the right of other people to make choices about their bodies. That's where the threat to democracy lies. You almost make these people sound natural." Bozamov rewrites the story so that readers "would know clearly these were fanatics who were a threat to democracy in America."

Forgiven, Bozamov is next reprimanded for writing about police brutality during a pro-life protest. Bozamov angers his editor by noting that the paper had published a story about police brutality at a gay rally. Bozamov redeems himself by a glowing story on Societies for Awakening Global Energies (SAGE), an alliance of "politically correct" activists bent on establishing a new "global consciousness" that "celebrates the oneness of all things." Then Bozamov becomes uneasy when the law forbids parents and churches to indoctrinate and evangelize children under 18. He writes the story "straight," which infuriates his editor.

Personal concerns envelop Bozamov when his suicidal wife is led to Christ by a former Russian communist. Bozamov himself becomes a Christian and is fired by the paper. Unable to get published in America, Bozamov sends a story on AIDS to a Russian "free paper" and is arrested for failing to get permission from the Justice and State departments. While out on bond, Bozamov flees with his wife back to the former Soviet Union, where he will have freedom to write his convictions.

From the Author:

As I complete this odyssey of Alexander Rudovich Bozamov, powerful forces are at work in the United States of America and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The democratic USA and the now-defunct totalitarian USSR were considered for most of the 20th century as the two most powerful nations in earth. Since the collapse of the Marxist giant, history is being turned on its ear. The metamorphoses taking place in the former Soviet Union and the United States are radical.

In the former Soviet Union, the changes are obvious. In the United States, the movement in the opposite direction is subtle. There is great irony here. If the now independent states of the former communist superpower, led by Russia, stay on the course of openness and freedom set in the early '90s, a host of new democracies will bless the earth. If the USA stays on the track many of us fear she is now on, the once-great beacon of world democracy will become more closed and restrictive. God forbid that it should be, but we cannot deny the possibility that in the 21st century repression and freedom may face off again, opposite of what occurred during most of the 20th century. It will be as if history were turned upside down.

I have seen firsthand the ferment of new freedoms in the Soviet Union. I have heard expressions of joy over newfound liberties. Conversely, I have seen indications that America is moving in the opposite direction. Information in the United States is increasingly being managed and tinted by a media elite that functions too easily in the uniformity of group-think. In fact, some of the fictionalized American mediathinkacrats depicted in this story are based on actual people whom I have known through my experiences as a journalist, a staff editor of a metro newspaper and as a staff assistant to the President of the United States.

The "politically correct" movement is a worrisome evidence of America's growing restrictiveness. Academics and others have learned they must speak exactly the right words to maintain their positions, much as opinion makers under communist governments had to resort to Orwellian doublespeak to save their careers and avoid prosecution.

From the vantage point of the present, one cannot predict what will happen long term in the former Soviet Union's attempts to throw off 70 years of Marxist repression. Dethroned tyrants are no doubt scheming now to reverse the freedom revolution.

Nor can one say what might happen in America in the dawning of the third millennium and beyond. But if present trends continue, the events depicted in this book could become tragically illustrative of life in the United States and wonderfully symbolic of liberty in the former communist world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hannibal Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0929292405
• ISBN 13: 9780929292403
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224