The Negotiator, a Memoir
by George Mitchell
Published by Simon and Schuster (2015)
Pages 400 Price  $28 (hard cover)
Paperback (2016)  $17

Senator George Mitchell’s story is a moving account of a man who came from a hard working immigrant family in America,  and rose to be the most powerful figure in the U.S. Senate.

Mitchell’s mother worked in the mills of Waterville, Maine and his father was a janitor at Colby College. During summers  while on a scholarship at Bowdoin, George helped his father cut the grass at Colby College.

Mitchell took a number of part time jobs to get through college. One job was to drive a truck for the Morrell family of Brunswick. He states in the book, “I had just gotten my driver’s license, and had only driven a car a few times. On my very first morning of work, a foreman asked me if I could drive. He pointed to a large flatbed truck and said take the truck up to a cement plant in Thomaston and pick up a load of cement and bring it back here.”  Mitchell gulped, but got into the cab and drove it to Thomaston. “One of my proudest accomplishments at Bowdoin was that  I got through 4 years without wrecking any of Morrell’s vehicles or equipment.” said Mitchell.

Another fascinating part of the book is Mitchell’s experience in the army in 1955. He graduated  from the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird and was flown to Berlin, Germany. He states, “Berlin was an exciting city to be in. People could travel throughout the city before the wall.Teams of Americans and Germans side by side were screening people fleeing from communism to the West and the team’s specific task was to  detect, intercept, and arrest those entering to be “sleeper spies” in the West, and to identify and recruit those who might  be willing to return to the East as spies for us.” It is amazing to read that Mitchell had this kind of experience and it must have been a very interesting time in his life.

Back in America after his army experience, he enrolled in Georgetown University Law School in Washington D.C. He worked during the day, and went to school at night. His schedule was demanding. When he graduated he knew he wanted to go back to Maine and practice law. Both he and his wife Sally Heath, whom he married in 1959, moved back to Maine, where he tried to get a job in a Law office. It was hard to find a job in a Maine law firm, but he landed a position in the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1960 he joined the Department as a trial attorney in the anti-Trust Division.

After many colorful experiences Mitchell in 1965 joined the Jenson and Baird law firm in portland. He also had worked on Edmund Muskie’s staff and gotten interested in politics. In June 1974 he ran for governor and was defeated and went back to his law practice.  His personal stories about his experiences during that period of time are heart warming. In 1979 he was appointed by President Carter to be a federal judge in the United States District Court of Maine.

In 1980 Muskie left the senate to become Secretary of State, and Governor Joseph Brennan appointed Mitchell to take Muskie’s senate seat. Brennan could have chosen other candidates to fill Muskie’s position in the senate but chose Mitchell because of his respect for Mitchell’s ability and potentiality. It was a great decision because Mitchell later became a leader in the senate and one of the most powerful senators in the nation as the Majority whip from 1989 to 1995.

Under Mitchell’s leadership the Clean Air Act and the Disabilities Act of 1990 were passed. The senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement and the formation of the World Trade Organization emerged. A very important bill that effects us today was written in his office. It is the Family Leave Act which allows 12 weeks leave for pregnant woman and the care for the elderly in catastrophic circumstances.

In 1994 he married Heather MacLachian, years after a divorce from Sally Heath in 1987. He has three children.

After he retired in 1995 Mitchell served as director of some major companies in America and was asked by different presidents to be negotiator in the Northern Ireland Peace Process as well as Special Envoy for the Middle East Conflict in 2009.

This remarkable book is better than any fictional novel. It is as timely today, as when it was written. It is about a real life hero from Maine, whose impact stretched across the world. His great humility and wonderful sense of humor impressed me. I recommend this book highly without hesitation.

***

Firefly
by Henry Porter
Published The Mysterious Press, New York 2018
Pages 471 Price $27

Here is a fabulous mystery for winter reading.The author, Henry Porter, writes like John le Carre, and is the UK editor of “Vanity Fair” Magazine. He has written five other novels and  this novel, “Firefly,” captured me.

“Firefly” begins in London above an elegant restaurant called Cedars, which caters to privileged Arab customers and world travelers. The story opens with Paul Samson in an upstairs office of the restaurant, reflecting on his photographs his parents, who as refugees founded the restaurant. His mother runs the restaurant at 72 like a general supervising her staff, and his father focuses on the import /export business. Originally the family came from Beirut, Lebanon. International intrigue emerges.

In an upstairs office of Cedars, Paul can see on a screen who is entering the restaurant. Therefore, he is not surprised when the Maitre d’ knocks on the door and says, “A man is here to see you. Do you need a table?” Paul responds, ”No, show him up.”

Peter Nyman, Special Operation Director of the British Government, shakes Samson’s hand and the the mystery opens. Nyman wonders if Paul Samson would come back one more time into his secret organization. Samson laughs. He is a multi -millionaire business man, and has no intention of gambling any more, although he has been to the races seven times this year.

Nyman replies that he knew Samson as an excellent intelligence officer and a loss to the service when he left. Nyman asks Samson to come back to his British secret intelligence agency and work for him one more time. Nyman pulls out of his pocket a picture and says,”Recognize this photo? It’s you about seven or eight weeks ago on the Turkey- Syria border. What were you doing there?”

Samson replies with a smile and says, “It’s none of your business.” Nyman replies, “In that part of the world illicit shipments over those particular borders involves one of four commodities- drugs, armaments, fuel or Syrian artifacts.”  Samson states, “I am not at liberty to discuss this. It is no business of the British government. I work independently and occasionally for  Hendricks-Harps, a private investigation organization, when I feel like it.” Apparently Samson has worked for the British secret service government before, as well as the Hendricks-Harps private organization.

Both the British government represented by Nyman and the Hendricks- Harps organization want Samson to work for them for different reasons, not artifacts from Syria. The topic of artifacts was a cover!!!

Both organizations can trust Samson. His family are refugees. He understands the importance of freedom. He is an asset because he speaks many languages including Arabic. He is a world traveler and knows Turkey and Syria well. He likes adventures and similar to Ian Fleming’s, James Bond, likes to take risks. What will Paul decide and where will it lead him?

At a meeting that Samson agrees to attend, Nyman wants to have Samson find a witness who can reveal who was a leader of a massacre of 150 people in Syria. The witness is a 12 year old boy who is running away from the leader of the massacre, who wants to kill him too. The 12 year old boy’s code name is “Firefly, the title of this fictional novel.  The only thing that Nyman knows is that the killer has a speech impediment. He has a tape of his voice from a cell phone but not a photo, and the cell phone has been destroyed, so it cannot give a location signal.Will Samson find the boy before the killer does is the question.

If you want to know more about Paul Samson and his projects of intrigue, you will have to read the book. It is a great and timely mystery. I couldn’t put it down.

Pat Davidson Reef is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston. She received her Masters Degree at the University of Southern Maine.She taught English and Art History at Catherine McAuley High for many years.She now teaches at the University of Southern Maine in Portland in the  Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Classic Films. She recently wrote a children’s book,”Dahlov Ipcar Artist, and is now writing another children’s book “Bernard Langlais Revisited.”