Description:

From Booklist

This is a tale of two men connected only by different secrets. Noel Leonard works for the Defense Intelligence Agency, analyzing satellite images to map targets in the Global War on Terror. Not even his wife knows what he does. Then, when he learns that his error has caused a school in Afghanistan to be atomized, he realizes how heavily secrets weigh on his and his family’s lives. A parallel plot concerns another man, unnamed, who is a mapmaker and comes to suspect that his late father’s foreign-service career also harbors secrets. He travels to Europe to uncover them. Deeply evocative, Reuss’ novel offers a vivid portrayal of the lives and doubts of its protagonists. It is a confusing and constantly obfuscating world, characterized by the mind-numbing nomenclature of weapons systems; by what Reuss calls bureaucratic jujitsu; and by the government’s penchant for secrets masked by rhetoric about “transparency.” All that cloudiness is contrasted by the acute awareness Noel and the mapmaker have for their surroundings. An often beautiful but challenging book that will engage thoughtful readers with both the author’s characters and his ideas. --Thomas Gaughan

Review

a thoughtful, beautifully written novel by Washington writer Frederick Reuss that tells the story of two men -- a defense analyst and a mapmaker -- and their struggle with the secrets that define them. and A Geography of Secrets has the texture and snap of a modern-day Graham Greene novel, painting a world in which even the smallest choices have devastating consequences -- and where, as one character tells us, Secrets don't keep, they putrefy. --The Washington Post