An ambitious, roguish young presidential candidate . . . a lifetime of inconvenient secrets . . . a decision to save a candidacy—all at a fatal cost: These are the provocative threads that master storyteller William F. Buckley Jr. weaves into this gripping yet surprisingly empathetic political novel. The Rake brings together Buckley's keen political insight and his tale-spinning craft to tell the story of a candidate on the rise and the dark shadows cast behind him. As Reuben Castle, the prototypical child of the sixties, coasts through his early life on a cloud of easy charisma, he leaves behind more skeletons than Arlington: a highly questionable Vietnam record, an abandoned wife, and worse. Yet two decades later, just as his dreams are within reach, he learns that his personal history is about to become his political epitaph—unless he takes the direst of measures to protect himself. With a blend of satire and suspense, Buckley offers an archly pointed portrait of a familiar icon. A novel by the defining conservative of our times, about a figure bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the defining liberal of our times, The Rake is a welcome new masterpiece, and Buckley's most winning, and provocative, novel in years.
Author
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words. Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan. Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
