by Gene Boccialetti
Sound familiar?
America ventures across the threshold of a new century with a new President, unexpectedly elevated to the role. Soon, he reveals himself to be an unconflicted promoter of his own brand of muscular Christianity, given to flexing America's military might everywhere in the world, exporting America's cultural values and its sense of morality while largely incurious about and indifferent to the reactions of other established and emerging powers. Complex international dynamics are set into motion, producing uncontrolled and unanticipated results.
Portsmouth, 1905: A distant mirror for 21st century America
It is the summer of 1905. America's President, Theodore Roosevelt, has persuaded the Russians and the Japanese, at war since February of 1904, to come to Portsmouth, an idyllic New Hampshire town, to negotiate an end to their bloody conflict---a conflict that has set a new standard of destructiveness, threatening to draw in all the major powers as well as topple Europe's ruling dynasties. At stake are vast riches, resources and military position in the Far East as well as the fate of Korea and China---both threatened by the colonial appetites of competing first-rank powers. Attracted by the resources and markets, and following the death of his Secretary of State, the President seizes the role of mediator as a means to advance personal, as well as strategic, financial and military interests of the United States.
As the conference opens, the President is convinced by his advisors to distance himself from possible, perhaps even likely failure and remain instead at his summer home on Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay. But TR, the relentless meddler, and his Assistant Secretary of State, Herbert Peirce, intend to manipulate conference proceedings using new understanding of individual and cultural psychology---a progenitor of Psychological Operations (PsyOps).
They enlist two Portsmouth locals---Mary Amazeen Baker, a notorious madam and savvy operator of the Hotel Gloucester; and John Langdon, the scion of a prominent family and great-grandson of a signer of the US Constitution to assist in executing a dangerous espionage operation. Under Peirce's direction, Baker lures Teresa Bellecano---a beautiful and enigmatic actress, left stranded and penniless after her show goes bankrupt at the Portsmouth Music Hall---to their undertaking.
Drawn in by images of personal profit, political power, status, patriotism and legitimacy, Baker, Langdon and Bellecano soon discover they have become targets for violent nationalists and anarchists, revolutionaries and shadow governments and coalitions. Realizing their own government has classified them as expendable, they must depend on one another for their survival as they confront their needs for redemption, purpose and control of their own destinies in the new world of the twentieth century.
Portsmouth is a story about coming of age and the dawn of a new era in American and world history---a simpler time, an optimistic time that celebrated the arrival of unprecedented possibility and modern technologies that would soon transform society. But while exciting changes transform everyday life, those changes are only partly understood and barely under control. When old world meets new, American optimism and naiveté collide with an established world order, providing new impetus to revolutionary forces in Russia and prompting a newly emerging Japan to plan a future war with the United States---beginning in the Hawaiian Islands.