Final Judgment by Eliot Asinof

Kenneth Flear left the uncertainty of being an author to find a stable career as a university professor. With his wife, two kids and predictable job, life is normal. An email arrives from A. L. Milner, a lunch meeting takes place with book publisher Jonathan Purcell, and Flear’s normal life is never the same. Jonathan’s goal is to bring Flear back to the world of being an author. Anne Milner’s goal is to stop President Bush from speaking at her college commencement ceremony.

After reading one of Flear’s books about protests, Anne has found the inspiration to take on the government and war. She believes with Flear on her college campus, he will stand on her side, motivating students and faculty to join her in the battle against a war she sees as unfair as well as a president she does not respect. When the masses fail to join in her quest, she takes matters in her own hands to find a way to keep Bush from taking the stage at the ceremony. Flear must then reflect on the decisions Anne made, as well as his involvement with her from the book he’d written many years before to the conversations they had at the college.

While the extreme anti-Bush politics of this book are not something I would typically enjoy reading, the way Asinof developed a storyline that created a history between the characters made a story worth reading. The reader can feel Flear’s struggles as he looks at his own past in comparison to the life that is taking place in the present.

Kim Patton, Reviewer

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