Fiction/Historical
The Man From 2063
Jack Duffy
2012
Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC
273 pages
In The Man From 2063, the truth behind the murder of President John F. Kennedy continues to be in question 100 years after the fact. Author Jack Duffy questions the U.S. government’s report that only one shooter was involved and offers a dramatic option steeped in the volatile politics of the early 1960s.
In the first part of the book, the reader is introduced to Sean Zumwalt, a thirty-six-year-old attorney from Washington, DC. Sean is in Dallas, Texas on the one hundredth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While there, Sean visits the site of the assassination. Sean has been fascinated with Kennedy’s death for years. He has conducted research on the assassination and the conspiracy theories concerning the case. Sean’s great-grandfather was at the Dallas hospital where Kennedy was transported after being shot. The information his great-grandfather gathered from talking to one of the trauma surgeons was the opposite of what the government released to the public back in 1963. With the advancements that have been made in the 100 years since JFK’s death (a cure for cancer and paralysis), Sean believes that the latest advances in time travel will allow him to go back to the day of JFK’s assassination and save the president’s life.
Part two of this novel describes the plot that led to John F. Kennedy’s death in vivid detail. The history of each participant, including Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, is offered to show how all of the men involved in the plot were linked together. The mastermind of the president’s assassination is portrayed as a ruthless, calculating, and brilliant rogue CIA agent. This character alone, an expert killer with unyielding political beliefs that are in complete opposition to those held by John F. Kennedy, makes the book worth reading. The alternative history of the JFK assassination will encourage the reader to do his or her own research, if for no other reason than to test the author’s theories.
The final part of this story reintroduces Sean Zumwalt into the plot after he successfully travels back in time to 1963. He brings with him documentation of Kennedy’s assassination and a focused determination to save the president’s life.
Duffy’s version of the assassination of JFK is extensive and intricate: in addition to diving into the personalities of the assassins and the details of the murder, the author also recounts the political events that occurred during that time period (the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War) and integrates them into the storyline as the foundation for the mastermind’s desire to exterminate Kennedy. While there is some redundancy in how the historical information is shared, history lovers should love this story as it pulls together so many of the conspiracy theories behind the Kennedy assassination, including the mysterious deaths of many of the witnesses and the involvement of the mafia in the president’s murder.
The Man From 2063 is an intriguing piece that offers a creative perspective on the controversy surrounding John F. Kennedy’s death. I highly recommend it.
Melissa Brown Levine
for
Independent Professional Book Reviewers
www.bookreviewers.org
www.melissabrownlevine.com
