As the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. And in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen, one of the few black women at Cornell, is asked to go to Eastern Europe to babysit a madman. In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance. On the island of Curaao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance. Carter's gripping new novel, Back Channel, is a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction-a suspenseful retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the fate of the world rests unexpectedly on the shoulders of a young college student. but they're careful not to tell her that. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. The only way for the two leaders to negotiate safely is to open a "back channel"-a surreptitious path of communication hidden from their own people. Both leaders are surrounded by advisers clamoring for war. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. The Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba.
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