Yet the Republican faithful had gathered here in June to nominate him again. “They’re delicious, is what they are,” Esther answered. Well, Charlie had. The gloves came off then. They’re people I don’t know, people I can’t trust.

“Amen,” murmured the man next to Mike. “No, doggone it! He looked down at the crumbs and little grease spots on the plate that had held the fried shrimp.

For once, everyone seemed to be right. The arson inspector didn’t say the Executive Mansion had had help burning down. The writing on the label was not in an alphabet Charlie could read.

Roosevelt’s operatives worked the Stadium hotels and bars just as hard as Joe Steele’s, though.

Herbert Hoover sure would, as often and as loud as he knew how. eyes. “What do I think of it? As if by magic, Stas Mikoian materialized alongside Charlie. They couldn’t very well not win this time. “Sure thing.” The waiter wasn’t Chinese. The elevator door groaned shut. He sure wouldn’t haul it to the convention floor, though. Nominated for the Nebula Award, he has won the Hugo, Sidewise, and John Esthen Cook awards.

Like any good Turtledove alternate history novel, there is a large mix of fictional and historical characters. Roosevelt had been born here.

It is an expanded version of the author's 2003 short story of the same name.[2]. The Roosevelts are then buried in Hyde Park, New York following their deaths. Achieving a landslide victory, President Joe Steele wastes no time pushing through Congress reforms that put citizens back to work.

Will Rogers isn’t kidding, Charlie thought as the demonstration began to lose steam. If he dropped it out the window, it would make a big hole in the sidewalk. Mike didn’t try to say anything. He didn’t care. “Take care of it—tonight. He wondered if he’d still be alive in a month, let alone in the dim and distant future of November.

Steele pulled the cork and poured a slug from the bottle into each coffee cup.

“They say it wasn’t arson,” the young man said. He poured his energy into politics after that. If he comes after me ’cause I’m right .

In 1952, Steele is elected to his sixth term in the presidency over Republican candidate Robert Taft with the morose Vice President John Nance Garner in tow.

It could, yes, but the odds were poor, especially at the Democrats’ national clambake. Yeah, you could blame accidents on God—hell, insurance policies called them “acts of God.” Murder? “Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted. In this timeline, Leon Trotsky is left as Lenin's heir, but Hitler's rise in postwar Germany commences with the same rapidity as in the real world. They weren’t just as disgusted because they’d been in the States a couple of generations longer—and because Charlie’s fiancée was Jewish. From what Charlie had heard, she often did.

Hoover meant well.

Vince Scriabin had noticed him, there in the hallway leading back to that greasy spoon’s john. He had trouble thinking any of the mourners, or even the Episcopal bishop, could believe it. FDR’s mansion,” the two fellows said, not really in chorus. “It’s all bullshit, Charlie, piled up like in the stockyards,” Farley shouted back. “It’s a free country, Grover. If I write a story that says he did this and that, ’cause Joe Steele told him to, it’s bad enough if he comes after me ’cause I’m wrong. Unh-unh. One of the few Turtledove books I'd recommend to non-nerds. Despite the electric lamps that lit the chamber and the lectern with the microphone, it seemed to Mike to come straight out of the Victorian age, when the mansion was built. Any reporter worth the crappy wage he got learned that in a hurry.

They glad-handed. “They stole it, and they murdered him. They balloted through the night again. His mind whirred all the way there.

“Winning is the most important thing, yes,” Joe Steele said.

Mike had voted for Al Smith in 1928, and knew Charlie had, too. If that turned out to be one more lie, chances were they wouldn’t just be disappointed. Mike knew the signs: the shabby clothes, the bad shaves, most of all the pinched mouths and worried eyes.