My thanks to NetGalley and the Soho Press for an advance copy of this novel about the days a leader of the revolution spent time in the Great City of New York, a city that changed him in many ways, and changed the world in ways we are still reckoning with.

In this day of 24-hour news and social media stars who broadcast every second of their lives for clicks and monetization, its hard to believe that the lives of many important people still remain undocumented and unknown. Historians have some ideas, letters to to others, speeches, interviews with media, appearances in the biographies of others, but some people were so busy living life, they never had a chance to chronicle it. Also there is the constant problem of people misremembering, for reasons of time, age, or for ego. Filling in the blanks is something fiction writers can do. Working with the known, trying to get to the heart of the unknown. What could have happened in this time, what thoughts might have been worked on, what thoughts tossed out. What lapses in judgement, lapses in the struggle, lapses in faith. A dalliance, covert meetings. All of this is possible, and in some ways might be real. What is known is that the man that history knows best as Leon Trotsky came to America, lived in New York before the Russian Revolution, and returned to fight for the future of Russia. In the hands of writer Robert Littell, master espionage writer Bronshtein in the Bronx, is a novel of this time, about a man at a loss, on the run, with a future ahead of him that will make his name, but end in exile and violence.

On a January day a man presents four passports to a clerk in New York Harbor. The passport of the man has the name Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, but the clerk, named John E. Hoover knows the person better as Leon Trotsky. A Russian revolutionary Trotsky had just been tossed out of Spain for stirring trouble, something Trotsky was quite familiar with. Over the years Trotsky has spent most of his time on the run, with either his wife and children or alone with his conscience. A conscience that he calls Litzky, after a troublesome friend in childhood. Trotsky has come to America with dreams of getting the working class, of which America is full of, to turn against the capital system they labor under. Trotsky has no understanding of America, with its huge buildings, subways, and workers who dream not of changing the system, but being a part of it. As Trotsky meets people, both real and fictional Trotsky wonders about his mission, his goals, and dreams. Even as events are changing around him, and his dreams of revolution begin to come through.

A small book with a lot going on. Littell has an understanding of characters who deceive for a living and Trotsky was very good at that. Even with his family, he kept almost a cover, ready to give everything up for his dream of revolution. Much of this book seems like a dream, a dream that Trotsky used to find himself. Littell is a very good writer, and injects a lot of interesting tricks into the story. One I liked was the fact that Trotsky talks about his conscience sounding a lot like a boy Litzky he knew as a child. In the opening of the book, Littell talks that his father changed their last name from Leon Litzky to Littell as it sounded so close Trotsky. As Littell's father was walking these same streets at the same time, I wonder if the son used some of his father's stories to share Trotsky's adventures in New York. Not the book I expected, but one I really enjoyed, for the history, the characters and of course the writing.

I have enjoyed Robert Littell's books for a very long time. This is a departure it seems, but not really. Maybe more of a prologue to the books that Littell has written about espionage, Russia and the Cold War. A very good read, for a lot of different reasons.