What happens when a man who has spent his life recording other people’s words is forced to decide what truth requires of him?
Walt Shepherd has spent thirty-five years on the White House stenographic team.
Then President Andrew Kane asks him to lie.
Walt refuses—and loses his job.
He returns to his hometown of Boaz, Alabama, where he reconnects with Regina Gillan, the high-school sweetheart he left behind decades earlier. Regina has also returned to Boaz after a long career in Chicago and now serves as editor of the Sand Mountain Reporter.
As their relationship deepens, Walt finds himself pulled into a widening political conflict between traditional Republicans, Democrats, and a growing movement of Kane loyalists known as Kanites.
While teaching stenography at Snead State Community College and taking freelance work through a Birmingham firm, Walt begins uncovering connections to the Constitution Foundation, a secretive organization determined to stop President Kane from winning another term.
The deeper Walt looks, the more dangerous the story becomes.
Soon he must determine whether the Foundation is trying to save the country—or destroy it in the name of saving it.
Beneath the Story
The Boaz Stenographer is a political suspense novel, but beneath the conspiracy are questions about truth, loyalty, power, extremism, and responsibility.
It asks:
- What does a person owe the truth when those in power demand something else?
- Can a movement become dangerous even when its members believe they are defending something valuable?
- When does political loyalty become moral surrender?
- Can violence ever be justified in the name of preventing greater harm?
- What responsibility does an ordinary person have after discovering information that could change lives?
- How much can a relationship survive when public events begin invading private life?
Walt’s struggle places him between competing claims of patriotism, conscience, loyalty, and truth.
About the Novel
Genre: Political Thriller / Mystery / Southern Fiction
Setting: Boaz, Alabama; Birmingham; Washington, D.C.
Time Period: Contemporary
Author: Richard L. Fricks
Part of: The Boaz Novels
From Richard
The Boaz Stenographer grew out of my interest in what happens when political conflict becomes personal.
Walt Shepherd has spent most of his adult life recording the words of powerful people. His crisis begins when he is no longer merely recording events but must decide what he is willing to do when truth, loyalty, and power collide.
The novel also explores another question that continues to interest me: what happens when people become so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that almost any action begins to feel justified?
At the center of it all is Walt’s relationship with Regina—a reminder that even when politics becomes enormous, the consequences are still lived by individual people.
