The Russian Revolution in Historical Fiction!

I'm Lee Mandel, author of Moryak: A Novel of the Russian Revolution, 2010 Grand Prize Winner at the Santa Fe Creative Arts Council.

About the Author
Lee Mandel is a physician with the United States Navy currently assigned as Command Flight Surgeon at the Naval Safety Center. He recently completed a three-year tour as Senior Medical Officer aboard the USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH (CVN 77). He is a published historian with interests in military and presidential history. He and his wife Ann reside in Chesapeake, Virginia; they have a son, Jeff and a daughter, Jennifer.

About my latest book, Moryak: A Novel of the Russian Revolution

President Theodore Roosevelt learns that it is the intention of Russian Tsar Nicholas II to sabotage the Portsmouth Peace Conference in 1905. In response, he sends Lieutenant Stephen Morrison on a top secret mission with British agent Sidney Reilly to kidnap the Tsar and remove him from Russia. Morrison appears to be the ideal man for the mission as he was born in Russia, is fluent in the language and is knowledgeable in Russian political affairs.

The mission goes awry when Morrison is captured and later sentenced to death. Through a twist of fate, he escapes his sentence and is instead sent to the Imperial Labor Camp on Solovetsky Island. Due to his increasingly violent nature, he comes to dominate the camp as "Moryak" (Russian for Sailor) and catches the attention of the Bolshevik prisoners. Upon his release from ten years in prison, he is invited to join the Bolsheviks. In time he is able to penetrate Lenin's inner circle; all the while they are unaware that he is actually working as a spy for the Allies during the Great War. Morrison's long and complex mission comes to a harrowing conclusion on the eve of the Russian civil war.