Award-winning author Robert J. Mrazek takes us from Harvard Yard to the brothels of South Boston and to the Kennedy mansions in Hyannis Port and Palm Beach in this vivid re-creation of an American landscape on the brink of war.It's the fall of 1937 and real life Harvard roommates Jimmy Rousmaniere and Jack Kennedy have returned to Cambridge for their sophomore year. At nineteen, Jimmy is a superb athlete who lives for competition and is still innocent in the ways of the world. At twenty, JFK is charismatic, funny, intellectually curious, and already a natural leader. Having had the last rites read over him twice in his childhood, he now lives for the moment. As the college year unfolds, and a national specter of war looms in the background, an act of hideous cruelty followed by the disappearance of a beautiful young Irish immigrant sets in motion a terrifying nightmare as Jimmy and Jack are forced to confront a predator who might live in their midst.