Virtural Book Tour: Forward to Camelot (50th Anniversay Edition) by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Forward to Camelot

by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Drake Valley Press

August 29, 2013

• ASIN: B00EVWYDG0

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BLURB:

WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SAVED?

On the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination comes a new edition of the extraordinary time-travel thriller first published in 2003 with a new Afterword from the authors.

On November 22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One using JFK’s own Bible. Immediately 

afterward, the Bible disappeared. It has never been recovered. Today, its value would be beyond price.

In the year 2000, actress Cady Cuyler is recruited to return to 1963 for this Bible—while also discovering why her father disappeared in the same city, on the same tragic day. Finding frightening links between them will lead Cady to a far more perilous mission: to somehow prevent the President’s murder, with one unlikely ally: an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition brings together an unlikely trio: a gallant president, the young patriot who risks his own life to save him, and the woman who knows their future, who is desperate to save them both.

History CAN be altered …

My Thoughts:

This was a fascinating novel combining the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination and science fiction elements. Cady Cuyler is an actress hired by John Staub a well-known special effects genius. She is hired to retrieve the Bible on which Lyndon Johnson swore his oath of office. In order to do this, she will have to travel back in time through cyber-time to November 22, 1963, the date when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Cady refuses the job as November is the month that her mother’s depression is usually at its worst and Cady is always there for her during that time.

But tragedy strikes, and Cady’s mother Sandra Cuyler, who has been mourning  the loss of her husband who mysteriously disappeared the same day Kennedy died, commits suicide, leaving Cady all alone. Cady then decides to take the job as it will also give her an opportunity to meet the man who made her mother’s life so miserable by his disappearance.

That’s when the adventure begins. John Staub’s time travel invention transports Cady to November 17^th, 1963. It is obvious from the author’s writing that they have done a lot of research into the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination. All the main events leading up to it have been woven into the story. Cady’s activities mesh into these facts seamlessly. The authors have done an amazing job of melding fact and fiction together.

This story was very captivating right from the beginning. I thought the authors did a wonderful job developing the storyline of how President Kennedy’s assassination might have been averted. The action was fast-paced. I didn’t feel there were any slow spots in it.

I liked the character of Cady. I felt sad for her that she had such an unhappy life living with a mother that had never gotten over the disappearance of her husband and therefore didn’t seem to have room in her heart for her mother. I loved that Cady was able to love her mother anyway, and took care of her, although she did not have the boundaries she needed to tell her mother “no”. Cady did not have the self-confidence in herself that her TV character “Sheila” had. I think that Sheila was in some ways the person that Cady really wanted to be. I was thrilled for Cady that when she came back to the year 2000, the things that she had done in 1963 had changed her mother’s history in such a positive way, that Cady’s life had turned out similarly, but much more positively.

The only thing I had a little difficulty resolving in my mind with in the book was that it postulated that two people could not exist in the same time. “The real you of that time would push away the you we’re creating to send there, which is artificial, even though you’ll feel you’re actually there, and function just like everyone else.” However, Cady did exist in November of 1963, as an unborn child in Sandra Cuyler’s womb. She stayed in Sandra’s house for 5 days, and in 1963 for a total of 13 days. And yet, at the end of the 13 days, she went back to her own time when she touched Sandra’s pregnant tummy. Just as she does and she begins to move back to the year 2000, she thinks, “There was a strange flash of light, and in an instant I understood what I’d done. Two versions of the same person can’t co-exist, John had said to me, explaining why George couldn’t go back to 1963.”

Overall, I thought that Forward to Camelot was an excellent work of fiction which incorporated a well-known true story as its basis. It was an interesting exploration of the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the killer, but involved as part of a consipiracy. The story was full of suspense, action and mystery. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys political intrigue or action/adventure. I gave this book 5 stars!

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest review as part of my participation in the Goddess Fish Book Tour for Forward to Camelot. All thoughts are my own. 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

SUSAN SLOATE is the author of 20 previous books, including the recent bestseller Stealing Fire and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel. The original 2003 edition of Forward to Camelot became a #6 Amazon bestseller, took honors in three literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production.

Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way!, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest on The History Channel. Amelia Earhart: Challenging the Skies is a perennial young-adult Amazon bestseller. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, managed two recent political campaigns and founded an author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC.

After beginning his career as a television news and sports writer-producer, KEVIN FINN moved on to screenwriting and has authored more than a dozen screenplays. He is a freelance script analyst and has worked for the prestigious American Film Institute Writer’s Workshop Program. He now produces promotional trailers, independent film projects including the 2012 documentary SETTING THE STAGE: BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, and local content for Princeton Community Television.

His next novel, Banners Over Brooklyn, will be released in 2014.

For updates and more information about Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition, please visit http://susansloate.com/CAMELOT.html.