Lea Carpenter has had an unlikely and compelling path to becoming a writer of novels about espionage: Princeton and Harvard, working for both Senator Biden and Beau Biden and a 10 year magazine publishing career working for the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and John F. Kennedy Jr.  There is a powerful connection in her writing to a subject that was not discussed as she was growing up in Delaware: her father’s work in military intelligence and special operations during World War Two.  Add up all of the disparate influences and experiences and you have a novelist who has received some serious acclaim.  Toni Morrison called her writing “elegant prose.”  The esteemed New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani has dubbed Lea Carpenter “an extraordinarily gifted writer.”