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For anyone who might try to identify a real life political figure in these pages, don’t. This work is as it is represented, total fiction.
Now let’s add a few asterisks to that legal disclaimer.
President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, Pope Francis and a few others you encounter in this novel obviously are real people. I’ve appropriated them for purposes of the story, common practice in historical fiction. Otherwise, the characters either have been born whole through my imagination or are composites from my experience. I’ve met quite a few interesting people during my years in active political combat. Parts of them have been grafted onto other parts. But no one, living or dead is a replica of a single individual, or intended to be. Except for Alena and Laura, who tend bar at the Big Fish restaurant in Rehoboth, Delaware. They are real people in a real restaurant and are exceptional at their work.
Some of the events I’ve fictionalized here are my recalls from actual political events. One example: The incident where “U.S. Senator Hamel” pays for prostitution services with his credit card. That actually occurred during one of the campaigns in which I was involved. I’ve created Senator Hamel and placed him in California to fit the story. The incident happened elsewhere. The real life senator was defeated in the next election.
To ease every reader’s mind, I should say there is no Washingtonia Grand hotel, or no hotel at all at the location I’ve described. But there are railroad tracks, and cargo moves over them on a regular basis, and some of that cargo is hazardous. The tracks are perilously close to the Capitol building, the White House, and other important private and government venues. All true. And there have been accidents.
I am well aware of the constitutional and other legal impediments for the impeachment process to end as I have concluded it in The Latina President’s final chapters. But with fiction the author has license to imagine his or her own reality.
Finally, or I should say, firstly, my love and gratitude to my wife, Sylvia Bergstrom, who saw nothing unusual about an 80-year-old man announcing he intended to write his first novel, and then giving him non-stop encouragement to actually do it.