From a thoughtful review by Aram Bakshian Jr.:
Washington is not a town that lends itself to love stories. Scandals and divorces, yes. But romances? Forget about it, particularly in the case of driven young singles pursuing careers in politics, lobbying and public policy. There’s no shortage of lust in the nation’s capital, as even a cursory glance at the daily papers reveals; there just isn’t a whole lot of love out there. This is especially true of love affairs across party lines. In the over-the-top era of zealous Trumpophiles and paranoid Trumpophobes, left is left, right is right, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But it didn’t all start in 2016 with The Donald and Hillary Dearest.
Witness “Red Line Blues,” Scott Seward Smith’s clever and amusingly bittersweet novel of a doomed romance between Owen Cassell, an aspiring, thoroughly decent conservative foreign policy wonk with a taste for strong drink, and Audrey, a bright, kind, beautiful but soggily liberal young librarian-in-training. It is set in 2012, in the climactic weeks of the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney but it couldn’t be more timely today.
Continue reading here. And purchase Red Line Blues here.
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