The Unmooring is a beautiful and tragic book about a loss of political innocence during the 1960's under the Presidencies of JFK and LBJ.
Can Michael and Riva's interracial love story survive the Civil Rights Movement and predictable right-wing racist backlash?
The book also acts as a story about the United States since Barack Obama was elected. A right-wing counter-revolution always follows a revolution.
Michael is the scion of an influential power couple in the Democratic Party. His mother, Anna, is pushing for change within the system. His father, Alan, is a right-wing hawk. Michael is a hypocrite who both rebels against his parents and uses their influence and contacts.
Michael is wide-eyed and optimistic at the start of the Kennedy Presidency, and falls headlong in love with Riva, a Black woman involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
The story builds towards a staggering betrayal that has left me reeling.

There's an interesting story here sandwiched among all of the explanatory passages about the (admittedly fascinating) politics of the era and the historical background, but the latter proved too overpowering for my taste. The characters never became anything more than archetypes (the cold warrior, the radical activist, the progressive journalist, the well-meaning liberal, etc) and had there been more work done with them (+ cutting of a lot of the educational passages), this would've been easily a 4-5 star read.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that historical fiction element that I was looking for and was glad everything worked with this. The characters had that feel that I was looking for and was glad everything flowed well. Ken Fireman has a strong writing style and can't wait for more.