Monkey On A String

During the bleak days of the depression, when few upwardly mobile black men and women were making it in White America, Marcus Holmes defies the obvious obstacles and manages to wangle an appointment in 1940 to West Point,only to discover he is the only black cadet at the U.S. Military Acadamy. Against all odds, he manages to graduate just as World War II is winding down. Increasingly self-confident and self-disciplined, he's determined to serve as a bridge between the black and white worlds. As a child he'd met Robbi, a needy and vulnerable white girl, and over time their unique and special relationship blossoms,in defiance of their families, and despite Robbi's unstable psyche, which waxes and wanes as they grow older. After Marcus serves heroically in the Korean War and he's appointed by President Truman as a junior member of a committee to arrange the successful integration of the U.S. armed services, Robbi and Marcus marry. The tale of their sometimes exhilarating and often stormy marriage becomes inextricably interwoven with Marcus's ambitious and equally stormy government career until he's appointed by President Kennedy to be the U.S. Ambassador to a newly independent West African country. At the peak of his career the pressures within the marriage and Marcus's obsession with his calling eventually lead to a denouement that neither he nor Robbi nor any of their friends or families could ever have imagined.

Joseph Viertel was born in New York City in 1915. He was graduated from Harvard magna cum laude and took ostgraduate work at the Yale Drama School.His novels include Lifelines, To Love and Corrupt, and The Last Temptation. His short stories have appeared in national magazines and his play, So Proudly We Hail, was produced on Broadway. His latest novel, Waltzing, will be published in the summer of 2002.