Path of Peril

by Marlie Parker Wasserman

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Pub Date Jan 17 2023 | Archive Date Apr 26 2023

Level Best Books | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles

General Fiction (Adult) | Historical Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers

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Description

Would the assassins plotting to kill Theodore Roosevelt on his visit to the Panama Canal succeed? Until this trip, no president while in office had ever traveled abroad. White House secretary Maurice Latta, thrilled to accompany the President, could not anticipate the adventures and dangers ahead. Latta befriends watchful secret service agents, ambitious journalists, and anxious First Lady Edith Roosevelt on their hot and humid trip, where he observes a country teeming with inequalities and abounding in opportunities. Along the way he learns about his own strengths—what he never imagined he could do, and what he discovers he can’t do.

Theodore Roosevelt did visit Panama in 1906, accompanied by White House staffer Maurice Latta. Interweaving the stories of real-life characters with fictional ones, Path of Peril imagines what the newspapers feared to report and what historians never discovered about Roosevelt’s risky trip.

A Note From the Publisher

Also available as an Ebook

Advance Praise

"Nothing better than settling down with a good, crisp, detail-rich assassination thriller. Someone is after Theodore Roosevelt, and author Marlie Wasserman tightens the screws, ratchets the tension, and twists the plot again and again. Read it."
—William Martin, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Lincoln Letter and December '41

“A feast of characters, scenery and history, Wasserman sets the table for a tremendous read. Path of Peril is a privileged walk with TR, his wife, his staff and dozens of characters struggling to create one of the “greatest engineering feats of the century.”
— Chris Keefer, author of No comfort for the Undertaker, a Carrie Lisbon Mystery

“Wasserman’s new novel, set around President Teddy Roosevelt’s visit to the Panama Canal in 1906, is more than just a historical crime novel. Her wonderful style of writing and her painstaking research into how assassins behave makes this book a must for readers. . . . In her profiles of the assassins, she does an excellent job of humanizing them but not excusing their actions or making them out to be heroes. Path of Peril is enjoyable and engaging and places the reader at the center of a fast, explosive and intriguing plot—making this new book one that should not be missed.”
— Mel Ayton, author of Plotting to Kill the President

“Wasserman’s Path of Peril gives readers an exciting leap back in time, to Teddy Roosevelt’s 1906 visit to Panama to drum up support for continued work on the canal. The plot focuses on potential threats to the president’s life, but the multiple narrators depict fascinating changes in Panama itself, set off by separation from Colombia, construction of the largest engineering work to that time, influxes of foreigners to the canal, and U.S. accession to great power status due to its commercial and industrial development. These themes intertwine mysteriously with real and fictitious scenes right out of old-timey albums and stereographs. The book keeps us in suspense until the end, although we know that TR ultimately survives. And we grow to care about some of the actors, a mélange of immigrants from all corners of the planet. Buy this book—you’ll love it!”
—Michael Conniff, historian of Panama