I Married a Communist: Nathan Zuckerman, Book 2

Winner of the 1999 Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union in Fiction

Iron Rinn, born Ira Ringold, is a Newark roughneck, a radio actor, an idealistic Communist, and an educated ditchdigger turned popular performer. A six-foot, six-inch Abe Lincoln lookalike, he emerges from serving in World War II passionately committed to making the world a better place and instead winds up blacklisted, unemployable, and ruined by a brutal personal secret from which he is perpetually in flight. His life is in ruins.

On his way to political catastrophe, he marries the nation's reigning radio actress and beloved silent film star, Eve Frame (born Chava Fromkin). Their marriage evolves from glamorous, romantic idyll to a disparaging soap opera of tears and treachery when Eve's dramatic revelation to gossip columnist Bryden Grant of her husband's life of espionage with the Soviet Union soon twists the couple's private drama into a national scandal.

I Married a Communist is an American tragedy as only Philip Roth can conceive...fierce and comical, eloquently rendered, and definitely accurate.