Retreat from the Precipice

On Sunday morning, October 14, 1962, two United States Air Force majors flew their U-2 spy planes over western Cuba and the San Cristobal area on a scheduled surveillance mission where previous intelligence gathering indicated suspicious activity. The results of that mission set in motion two weeks of events which are now commonly called the Cuban Missile Crisis.In Retreat from the Precipice, Duke Southard's eighth novel, the familiarity of the dramatic, tension-filled story of President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev engaged in nuclear war one-up-man-ship serves as a backdrop for three families living in the Philadelphia suburb of Endicott City, New Jersey.Two weeks of living with the threat of nuclear annihilation places varying levels of tension on families already dealing with personal stress in the regular family dynamics of the early sixties era.Retreat from the Precipice captures the increased pressures the Johnsons, the Dodges, and the Greenwalts, a cross-section of the societal strata coexisting in one town, endure as their world threatens to blow apart. Their struggles to keep their families together and functioning while facing new threats and fears every day are unique and personal yet present universal human truths.The dangerous history of the period and the life of ordinary people suffering the anxiety of existing under the cloud of Armageddon blend to build this story into a mesmerizing narrative of what some have termed the most terrifying two weeks in modern history.