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MIRAFLORES by Keith Yocum

MIRAFLORES

Memoir of a Young Spy

by Keith Yocum

Pub Date: Dec. 1st, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9978708-7-9
Publisher: KDP

In this novel, a newly minted CIA operative is sent undercover to Panama at the height of the Cold War.

When Nick Haliday was a senior in high school, his mother, Margaret, an alcoholic and “profoundly unhappy and ill” woman, committed suicide, a dark moment that weighs on his soul like a heavy stone. Nick’s relationship with his father, Phil, is emotionally “moribund.” After Nick graduates from college, he joins the CIA, a decision meant to anger Phil, a high-ranking official at the State Department who loathes the spy agency. Phil ominously warns Nick about his unscrupulous new employer: “ ‘Here goes: Don’t believe a goddamn thing the agency tells you. If you assume they’re lying to you each step of the way, then you’ll come out in one piece. Otherwise,’ he shook his head, ‘you’re cooked.’ ” In 1958, the Cold War is well under way, and the agency is obsessed with Marxist agitation against American interests all over the globe. Nick is sent to Panama disguised as an English professor—a “goddamn left-wing, beatnik, commie American”—in order to infiltrate insurrectionist groups intent on a liberation from American occupation and looking to wrest control of the Panama Canal, which includes the Miraflores Locks. Yocum furnishes a chilling depiction of the CIA’s remorseless zealotry, a macabre combination of moral nihilism and jingoism. Nick falls in love with one of his students, Maria Santiago, a “startlingly attractive young woman” involved in protests, a romantic entanglement that complicates both his mission and his commitment to it. The author poignantly captures the miasma and moral bewilderment of a tumultuous time as well as the despair that leads Nick to become a willing participant in deeds of which he will never be proud. This is a mesmerizing story, full of artistic restraint and yet unflinching.

A captivating spy tale, historically astute and morally nuanced.