Red, White and Blue Unknown - 1999

From the publisher

Compromising Positions to Lily White --seven critically acclaimed novels, seven New York Times bestsellers. Now, with her eighth novel, Susan Isaacs has written her finest work yet. Red, White and Blue tells the story of two ordinary Americans who find it within themselves to become extraordinary heroes. Charlie Blair of Wyoming and Lauren Miller of New York start out as strangers. They are drawn together by an appalling hate crime and by their mutual passion for justice. Yet they share more than a sense of fair play. They are not simply kindred spirits but actual kin, descendants of immigrants who met on a boat on their way to America, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.Special Agent Blair of the FBI has the numbing job of a bureaucrat and the soul of a cowboy. A wry Westerner from his Stetson to his boots, he also happens to be the great-great-grandson of . . . Dora Blaustein? Dora what? True, although he is unaware of that particular ancestor. A nearly burned-out case at thirty-four, he is about to walk away from the safe world of paper-pushing to risk his life in Wyoming, infiltrating an armed, white supremacist, viciously anti-Semitic group called Wrath. Wyoming born and bred, Charlie seems the perfect choice for this undercover operation, because who in Wrath could question this whiter-than-white man, so clearly one of their own? Also in Jackson Hole is Charlie's apparent opposite. Gen-X Lauren Miller is articulate, ironic--and unwaveringly liberal. A journalist from Long Island, she has been hired by the Jewish News to investigate a bombing that Wrath is suspected to be behind. Lauren's job is to know who, what, where and when, of course. But mostof all, she is compelled to discover why. Why are all these people who've never met a Jew in their lives obsessed with Jews--and why do they want them dead? Just who is it who gets to define who is an American? With narrative grace, insight and her trademark exuberant wit, Isaacs not only chronicles Lauren's and Charlie's investigations, but explores their American heritage as well: How did their forebears--how did all of our forebears--get from there to here? And what can this mountain man and this suburban woman possibly share--except a few random genes? Intelligent, exhilarating and intensely moving, Red, White and Blue is a novel about what makes Americans American.