Dewey Defeats Truman: A novel [Hardcover]

Thomas Mallon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1997

From a writer whose last book, Henry and Clara, prompted John Updike to declare Thomas Mallon one of the most interesting American novelists at work, comes a story that perfectly captures the delightful romance and wistful magic of our recent, and more innocent, past.

Thomas Mallon has masterfully appropriated a jubilant legend (and famous headline) of modern American history -- Harry Truman's upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election -- and built around it a midwestern Midsummer Night's Dream.

Set in Dewey's hometown of Owosso, Michigan, this is the captivating story of a local love triangle that mirrors the national election contest. As the voters must decide between candidates, so must Anne Macmurray choose between two suitors: an ardent UAW organizer and his polar opposite, a wealthy lawyer who's certain he will ride to state Senate victory on Republican coattails.

As they weave a small-town tapestry of dreams and secrets, the people of Owosso ready themselves for the fame that is bound to shower down upon them after Dewey's "sure thing" victory.  But as the novel -- and history -- move toward election night, we watch the citizens of Owosso, Anne Macmurray and her suitors in particular, await the outcome of the election and the rearrangement of their fates in a climax filled with suspense, chagrin, and unexpected joy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Despite what the title might imply, this isn't speculative fiction about what would have happened if Thomas Dewey had defeated Harry Truman in 1948. Rather, it's a gently comic novel set in Dewey's home town of Owosso, Michigan, in the period between his presidential nomination in June 1948 and his stunning defeat that November. The town's mania for its native son serves as a framework for the book's story, which centers on a love triangle among Peter Cox, a dashing, up-and-coming young Republican; Jack Riley, a disheveled Democratic union organizer; and Anne Macmurray, a fetching bookstore clerk and would-be novelist. They and other deftly drawn Owossoans move briskly through a plot that smoothly interweaves public and private events. The book is flavored with nostalgia for what the author has called an era with "a lack of sourness."

From Publishers Weekly

The title of this beautifully controlled novel, Mallon's fourth, refers to the famously inaccurate newspaper headline that appeared the morning after Election Day in 1948. But when the narrator here tells us that the clock tower in Owosso, Mich., chimes at three minutes past the hour in the summer of 1948, we know it's dead-on. We know it because Mallon has so meticulously re-created a time and place that even trivial data has the force of nothing less than truth. Mallon, who reconstructed a New York childhood in Aurora 7 and Civil War Washington in the much-praised Henry and Clara, here turns his exacting research and sure storytelling skills to the home town of Thomas E. Dewey, who in this summer of '48 is the runaway favorite to win the presidency from Harry Truman in November. Although Dewey is long removed from Owosso, the town is beside itself with civic pride, and plans are afoot for a Dewey Walk, a promenade along the river that will feature a diorama of "President" Dewey's life and accomplishments. However, there is a secret buried in the riverbank?the body of a young man whom everyone in town (with one important exception) thinks left the area 50 years ago, but who in fact took his own life in the face of scandal. The elderly Horace Sinclair carries the secret and lobbies to block the Dewey Walk while hoping for a Truman victory. Around this drama are the seemingly innocent romances of the community, which rather quaintly tease the slight political tensions among its citizens. The hustling, go-getting Billy Grimes has a crush on Margaret Feller, who pines after the mysterious, handsome Tim Herrick, whose mother melodramatically mourns the loss of her war hero son, Arnie, who died in France in 1944. When Tim disappears (he actually provisions a show plane and flies out of town), his mother blames Frank Sherwood, a teacher at the high school distrusted for his effeminacy, who had befriended Tim. And then there is the romantic triangle of Anne Macmurray, a wholesome woman who works in the bookstore, Peter Cox, a well-to-do, dashing carpetbagging Republican vying for a coattail's win in Owosso's congressional district, and Jack Riley, the principled labor union organizer who is all-Truman. As Election Day draws near, the whereabouts of Tim Herrick, the quiet discovery by Peter Cox of the town secret, the ambivalence of Anne toward her betrothed, Jack Riley, and the reconciliation between the grieving Jane Herrick and Frank Sherwood?who, it turns out, was in love not with Tim but with her son Arnie?makes for a drama that all but obscures the greatest upset in the history of presidential politics. In the end, a secret is returned to the riverbank and a suppressed sexual identity is liberated; and politics, though the occasion for these developments, is proved to operate at a distance from the human heart. Mallon's complicated meditation on the trials of private and public identity is beautifully fashioned. Its tale of yesteryear tells America a little bit about what it is today.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (January 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679444254
• ISBN-13: 978-0679444251
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,374,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good at finding the evocative detail, March 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Dewey Defeats Truman: A novel (Hardcover)

This is the second novel by Thomas Mallon I have read (the other being HENRY AND CLARA), and in both books Mallon excels at finding the right detail to open up a character or a scene more fully for the reader. In a scene in a hospital waiting room, Anne Macmurray wishes to indicate to her fiance to leave so that she can comfort a teenage boy who she senses wants to cry but won't in the presence of the older man. Mallon writes that Anne attempts a telepathic sort of glance at her fiance, "like a test of the Emergency Broadcast System," and he does take the hint. The detail both evokes the period in which the book is set and also shows how Anne is slowly satisfying herself that she has made the right choice after all in her finace. The novel is filled with small moments like this, all of them well selected and all of them reminding us of the humanity of the characters. (If I had the book with me here at work, I could add another good example, but that is one I remember from savoring this book in January.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Novel, May 29, 2003

By 

"bertrampotts" (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dewey Defeats Truman: A novel (Hardcover)

Two things in particular set this novel apart. One is Thomas Mallon's acute eye for detail -- both in terms of conveying a very particular milieu and in finding behavioral nuances that reveal so much about the characters.

The second is the author's genrosity of spirit and humaneness. He has created richly-detailed people in this book, all of whom are recognizable and utterly believable. Despite their flaws, these are characters we truly do care about. Mallon's tone is one of wry, non-judgmental sagaciousness. A lovely novel, highly recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Score One for the Romantics, April 1, 2002

By 

James Carragher (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dewey Defeats Truman: A novel (Hardcover)

Thomas Dewey, the people of his hometown, Owosso, Michigan, and the reader all come in for surprises as this entertaining read moves through its fast-paced pages. Mallon has done his historical research on the time and the town well, and, among the numerous narrator points of view, has created some memorable characters, most of whom stand slightly off-center from the main love triangle. A few never take on more than a single dimension, particularly the striver teenager Billy Grimes. And the deep dark secret that drives much of the novel's action hardly seems momentous after fifty years, let alone shocking if it were to be revealed. But those are small quibbles for the opportunity to spent novel time with the cantankerous Horace Sinclair, the apparently shallow neophyte politician Peter Cox, the forever grieving mother Jane Herrick, her trapped son Tim, and the high school teacher Frank Sherwood who introduces them through his telescope to Jupiter while carefully keeping his own world hidden from all. Because Mallon succeeds in making both the characters and the time affecting, the upbeat ending for nearly everyone is a pleasure. Sure, it's not a happy ever after assurance that Mallon delivers as the country careens toward the second half of the 20th century, but he has skillfully brought each character around to the opportunity to live a chosen, rather than prescribed, life, and therein lies much of the considerable satisfaction this novel gives.