Novelist E.L. Doctorow's work often crosses the blurred line between story and history. Here he offers a fictional account of real-life spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, focusing primarily on the couple's troubled children and how they deal with their parents' actions and eventual execution. The novel elegantly captures the essential culture of the American communist movement, from the innocuous gatherings of the fifties to the misguided violence of the sixties.

Chris Hodgdon