Books in Brief: Sweet Land of Liberty

Sweet Land of Liberty, by Edwin Silberstang (Putnam, 319 pp., $6.95). It’s a fine plot for one of those “what if” novels that can be mighty hard to put down: the beautiful daughter of some future U.S. President is kidnapped by a left-wing cabal, and the kidnappers agree to set her free when the President caves in to their demands: full pardon for a couple of radical firebrands cooling off in jail. Eugene Burdick would have known how to handle it: some insider stuff about corridors of power, a few noisy ideological arguments, and a dramatic trackdown and confrontation for the finale. Edwin Silberstang has chosen to take all this seriously, which is no crime, but he’s not always up to it. There are some fine touches in the novel —particularly his spooky portrait of Dean Stillman, the obsessive masterbrain behind the kidnap scheme—but the good moments are surrounded by an unholy amount of guff. Windy assaults on the modern mess go on for pages, and the author’s arrows fit snugly into holes other marksmen have drilled: greedy businessmen, bought politicians, franchised sandwich shops, Harvard liberals, plastic everything, and so forth. The core of the novel is the old double-definition of “patriotic behavior”: whether it means obeying the law or flouting it for some larger good. Silberstang comes off sounding hostile to his radicals and his Establishment-types alike, but his gleeful detailing of the presidential family’s toilet habits seems to offer the key to his sympathies. It’s really that sort of book, sweaty prose style and all. A hateful little number, insulting to both sides, and artistically simple-minded.