Russell Jack Smith

Lodestone is a captivating chronicle of a young man's passage from adolescence to maturity, making his way through the grim Great Depression and the unforeseen challenges of World War II. A seeking and striving fellow, Dana Brown deals equally well with the sweaty labor of a stokehold in a Great Lakes ore freighter and the soft pleasures aboard an elegant shikara on Dal Lake in Kashmir.

Here is a fast-moving spy story with a difference. Russell Jack Smith deftly reveals the human side of espionage with this portrayal of a CIA operative torn between his work in exotic Singapore and the solid satisfactions of a crusading newspaper editor in small-town Maine..