Fellow travelers cover

Fellow travelers

by Thomas Mallon

Historical novel about the competing claims of faith, love, and politics during the McCarthy era. Washington, D.C., early 1950s: a world of bare-knuckled ideology, hard drinking, and secret dossiers, dominated by such outsized characters as Richard Nixon, Drew Pearson, Perle Mesta, and Joe McCarthy. Timothy Laughlin, recent Fordham graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism, meets a handsome, profligate State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leading to Tim's first job and--after Fuller's advances--his first love affair. Now, as McCarthy mounts an increasingly desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on "sexual subversives" in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. The novel moving between the Senate Office Building and the Washington Evening Star, the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe, energized by political drama, unexpected humor and heartbreak.--From publisher description.

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?