Fellow Travelers – Thomas Mallon

Expectation: A steamy political thriller about two up and coming politicos balancing a clandestine, queer love affair under the specter of the Lavender Scare.

Reality: Essentially a nonfiction novel with unlikable characters and flat development. Do yourself a favor and skip it in favor of the limited television series. 

My Take:

Ever since reading Eric Cervini’s “The Deviant’s War,” I’ve had a fascination with the Lavender Scare component of the McCarthy era when, in many ways, moral panic about homosexuality made it easier for queers to find one another and gain allies. 

That is, of course, a rose-colored view of the time period, which had police raids of queer spaces, undercover entrapments, forced institutionalizations and anti-gay laws that culminated with the culling of 5,000 suspected homosexuals from federal employment. 

There are hundreds of stories about these dark years of American history, but I continue to find myself drawn to those that feature characters at ground zero, living clandestine lives in Washington, D.C., amongst the very people trying to punish them for being themselves. 

Naturally I was drawn to Thomas Mallon’s “Fellow Travelers,” first published in 2007, but with renewed interest given the acclaimed limited series. Maybe my expectations of this novel were clouded by the steamy trailers, but I expected something far different from Mallon’s story, which was a boring, frustrating slog.  

This is historical fiction that’s heavy on history and light on fiction. In many ways it felt like the author actually wanted to write a nonfiction book, but his publisher told him to add some romance to make it interesting. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t work. 

Mallon never found a way to organically weave the plight of closeted lovers Timothy Laughlin and Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller into the assorted real-life scenarios presented. Instead the plot moved along as a smorgasbord of political mudslinging and social calls for see-and-be-seen types working their way up Eisenhower’s administration. 

In other words, not very entertaining. 

It also didn’t help that neither character is particularly likable or happy, which is understandable given the circumstances, but after nearly 400-pages of internalized homophobia and relationship power imbalances, I couldn’t care less what happened to either of them. The toxicity of their relationship was off putting, and by the time I finished the book, I was angry to have dedicated so much effort to it. 

The only sections with character development were the prologue and epilogue, where Hawk reflects on the choices that got him the prime role as second in command at the U.S. embassy in Estonia in the 1990s. These small parts promise the story Mallon could’ve written, had he figured out what message he was trying to send. 

Christian Barillas did a passable job with audiobook narration. While little distinction was given to characters or situations, I think he did the best he could given the source material. 

Rating (story): 2/5 stars

Rating (narration): 3/5 stars

Format: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: December 1 – December 14, 2023

Multi-tasking: Good to go. In fact, just skip this book in any format altogether.