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I was born in Detroit in 1959, though I lived my formative years in Stillwater, Minnesota, a town just south of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, or at least one of the villages he based it on. I graduated from Stillwater High in 1977 and from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis in 1983; I have a B.A. in International Relations.
I have always been an English teacher -- work I stumbled into as a student in Madrid. Finishing college, I lived in Quito, Ecuador, and Rabat, Morocco, always teaching English.
I settled permanently in Madrid in 1985, and married a few years later. I keep my bread buttered by teaching English courses on a freelance basis in Spanish companies in the Madrid area. If you look at my web page, www.philipkraske.com, you'll see that half is for my English business.
And so from my perch in Spain I write about America, and try to offer the perspective of one who can see it both inside and outside, both the trees and the woods. It is an extraordinary time in the nation's history, especially regarding the growing contempt between the governors and the governed. It will end badly. But in the meantime, what a magnificent spectacle, like one of Tintoretto's immense canvases boiling with humanity. Damn the falling rates of literacy; it's a great time to write novels.
Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
At this time of political ups and downs, "Mockery" deserves a starring role as a book people who care about politics should read. The narrator is Sam Walker who was just a struggling writer as he began looking into the miraculous election of Third Party presidential candidate Mitch Taylor. Sam interviews those who worked for the major candidates who lost the election and finds that two party workers are deeply involved. He writes a book about the election and it becomes a best seller, making him wealthy. What happened? Laura Prestini and Terry Letizzle may have switched secret video tapes inadvertently, thus causing both of their presidential candidates to lose the election. One video tape shows Terry's candidate, Gotchell, having sex in a closet with an unknown woman, obviously not his wife. The other tape records presidential candidate Frakes making highly derogatory comments about senior citizens. Woops! Terry commits suicide while Laura climbs to the top politically. Sadly, he finds that Laura ruined Terry on purpose while she rigged an American election for her own benefit. Sam knows that he is being followed and even torn apart by malicious, baseless rumors. Can he survive all this intrigue or will Laura triumph again?
"Mockery" is a well-written, well-edited story with a plot that flows believably to its shocking conclusion. The games that people like Laura play do occur in our country's politics, although hopefully not at the Presidential level. Readers will be drawn into the story with plenty of good guy characters as well as bad guys or just weak and corruptible characters. Someone like Sam who fight against the system are not likely to win but the reader knows this already. Laura Prestini has made a mockery of U.S. elections and I am sure readers will be drawn to this book as to a magnet.
