My Life, A Novel
by
Book Details
About the Book
This unique book moves rhythmically between fact and
fiction. Gene Cowen writes one chapter of his own life, then switches to
fiction, and then back again to fact.
He starts with his life as an Air Corps combat
navigator during World War II. In a fiction chapter, his alter ego, Navigator,
is shot down and rescued by an Italian family and their daughter Maria. He
later meets Maria as a Rome prostitute. Navigator gets Maria out of the whoring
business and she falls in love with him. Cowen, in real life, then becomes a
journalist in the U.S., later works in Congress, then the White House. In
fiction, Maria, now married to someone else, follows Navigator to Washington.
Her husband gets involved with extremists, who put a Mob contract on his life,
and then he becomes a conspirator of the Watergate burglars. Navigator works a
deal with a Mob boss to save Maria’s husband’s life, and later coaches him on
how to get out of Watergate break-in charges.
Throughout this there is the tension of unrequited
love and the ominous presence of a Mob gunman. Maria is in love with Navigator.
But he is married and loves her, “but not quite the same way.” The gunman,
deflected by the Mob boss, lurks in the background.
Gene Cowen writes a unique story of his own life and fantasizes on what might have been, what could have been.
About the Author
Gene Cowen was Washington Vice President of the
American Broadcasting Company, deputy assistant to President Nixon, chief of
staff to a U.S. Senator and an assistant to a Congresswoman. Before that, he
was a reporter for the Syracuse (NY) Herald
Journal and its Washington bureau. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees
from Syracuse University. During World War II, he was a combat navigator and
was awarded the Air Medal. He and his wife live in Washington, D. C.