FORWARD TO CAMELOT by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Add a Comment

Comment by AUTHOR 2 U BOOKS P.K. PARKER on January 30, 2008 at 2:20pm

Author 2 U Review:

FORWARD TO CAMELOT by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Time Travel had never really been on my mind, but when I read the synopsis of this novel, it surely intregued me. To go back to the 60's and change history as we knwo it, from the assassination of JFK to the cuban missle crisis, and to the cold war.
Cady Cuyler took her life into her own hands when she agreed to take this trip of a life time, meet people we've only read about in history books, and help rescue President Kennedy. She is a heroine not just for our time but also to look up to for the future generation.
The constant action in this novel has kept me on the edge of my seat, but the ending was unfortuned for Lee Harvey Oswald in my opinion. I wanted him to live so desperately after he had fought so hard and risked his life so many times to safe President Kennedy.
I'm looking forward to reading more books with the main character of Cady, and hope the movie will be just as exciting, for I would definetely go see it.
Petra Lozano
Author 2 U Books

Comment by Susan Sloate on December 16, 2007 at 2:58am

There's some interesting information we just uncovered about JFK's Bible. The truth is that it was never actually `lost' -- though at the time we wrote it, our research indicated that it was. It's a wonderful story, and I hope to get more in depth about it when Petra and I sit down to talk in the near future. But the uncomfortable fact remains that the historic artifact that Cady chases after in FORWARD TO CAMELOT has been sitting for years and years on display in the LBJ Presidential Library!

Comment by AUTHOR 2 U BOOKS P.K. PARKER on October 24, 2007 at 1:25pm

FORWARD TO CAMELOT

By Susan Sloate & Kevin Finn


Excerpts




From pages 25-26

It was a famous photograph, one I'd seen many times. In the center of the photograph was a tall, burly man, with thinning hair slicked back, a large face, big flappy ears, right hand raised piously, facing a small brisk woman with dark hair and glasses. On the man’s right, crowded next to him, seeming crushed by his vitality, was another small dark woman, her face blank with conflicting emotions.

But the man, for all his bulk and heartiness, was not the magnetic force in the photograph. The woman on his left was. Younger than anyone else, with dark glossy hair, in a bulky light suit, her profile regal even in her anguish, blood spattering her clothes, she stood watching sightlessly. Her beauty and grief drew all eyes. Her pain was almost visible on the photo itself.

“This is the swearing in of Lyndon Johnson as President on Air Force One in Dallas, on November 22, 1963. His wife is on his right. Jacqueline Kennedy stands on his left. Sarah Hughes is the judge administering the oath. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated only a couple of hours before.”

“I know the photograph, George.”

“Good for you. Look here.” He pointed carefully at the almost invisible edges of the book under Johnson’s massive hand. “Johnson, of course, needed to be sworn on a Bible. Here it is, being held by Mrs. Hughes.”

“You want the Bible Johnson took the oath on?”

“I do. That Bible belonged to President Kennedy.”

I looked up in surprise. “It was Kennedy’s Bible? I didn’t know that.”

“It was the only Bible on Air Force One. Kennedy supposedly traveled everywhere with it. When they were scrambling to find a Bible – Johnson insisted on taking the oath before he left Dallas -- they remembered Kennedy’s Bible and used that.”

“Well, why can’t you buy the Bible from the Kennedy family? Even though I can’t imagine they’d give it up.”

“Well, now, that’s a problem. The Bible disappeared right after this picture was taken.”

I hated to admit it, but that intrigued me. It was getting harder to remember that I’d just lost my job a few hours before. “How could it disappear?”

“Well, the story goes that Sarah Hughes actually had it in her hands when she left Air Force One in Dallas. You have to understand – that day, the whole country was in a state of shock, and people did crazy things without realizing it, half the time. Coming down the ramp, Mrs. Hughes met a man dressed in a suit and tie and sunglasses, a man she believed to be a Secret Service agent. He asked her for the Bible. I don’t think she even realized till that minute that she still had it in her hand. She thought he intended to return it to the Kennedy family, and of course, immediately gave it to him.”

He paused. I was riveted. “At least, that’s what she said. But the Bible disappeared that day and was never seen again.” George paused again and gave me a devilish grin. “JFK’s own Bible, used to swear in Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One ... what do you think
an item like that would be worth?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine.

“Nobody can,” he said softly. “Do you understand now? As a piece of history, part of one of the twentieth century’s most pivotal events … that Bible would be beyond price. And I intend to have it.”