A God in Ruins (1999) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Quinn Patrick O'connell: Governor of Colorado and the Democratic candidate for president. A Catholic orphan of sixty years; he was born Jewish. As a child he was wonderful with the infants at the orphanage, a little gentleman. Quinn was a nifty first baseman in baseball.  He played ice hockey and ski raced in a rather mediocre manner. Dan harangued him into football.  Quinn played fullback on offense and linebacker on defense.  He was average to everyone except Dan O’Connell. Quinn was an intellectual.
• Thornton Tomtree: Pucky and Thorton's child. Flat in ambition, flat in achievement, great sailors and peacefully took their places in line on the inheritance ladder and went on to live flat wealthy lives with flat wealthy mates.
• Darnell Jefferson: Moses's son. Thornton's friend. Darnell Jefferson was a born point guard and remained one: quick, graceful, deceptive, and cool. He had a face full of sunshine and was blessed with a silk tongue.
• Rita Maldonado: Quinn's wife. Rita is the most sensual soul mate one could pray for. Daughter of the famed portrait artist and sculptor Reynaldo Maldonado. Although Rita was considerably younger than Quinn and Carlos, she persisted in breaking into their two-person club. She rode with the wind, played ball, and helped build a monumental tree house.  She hung out around the O’Connell kitchen.  She learned chess well enough to beat both of her “brothers.”
• Daniel Timothy O’Connell: Quinn's adoptive father. Fought in WWII. Has a limp. Staff Sergeant. Used to be a cop. He was a singer and dancer and great teller of jokes. Dan loved boots and cowboy hats and leather chaps.  He loved to rope and brand and train his new border collie.  He loved life during a challenging blizzard. Dan loved the rodeos and the B.S. that went with cattle trading.  He loved the respect.  He was a tough man in a tough valley. Dan was a Marine, the most tender and loving of men but faced with the most sorrowful of circumstances.
• Greer: She organized, she raised money, she knew the political operatives, and she masterminded Quinn's “miracle” campaign. His ex-girlfriend and lover. Used to write for the Bison Weekly. Very light olive skin that seemed too smooth to be skin.
• Marina Geller: Marina Geller was not yet twenty when she met the fabled Yuri.  She had survived the war more easily.  She had been taken in by an aunt in Minsk who had married a Christian and converted. Marina had also come from Zionist stock.
• Siobhan O’Connell: A church functionary with high midlevel contacts. Quinn's adoptive mother.
• Marine Major General Jeremiah Duncan: Marine Major General Jeremiah Duncan was a lesser maverick, but a maverick nonetheless. He became the first fighter pilot ace when he shot down five Japanese Zeros in a single day over Guadalcanal, but was shot down in turn and somehow escaped alive.  An ace, but he could fly combat no more. Jeremiah Duncan’s chest bore a Congressional Medal of Honor, a Navy Cross, and three Purple Hearts.  Known with affection throughout the Corps as Dogbreath, he now longed to retire to the Eastern Shore, where he had a big old house, a dandy fishing boat, and scads of children and grandchildren.
• Carlos Martinez: Child of Pedro and Consuelo. Friend of Quinn. Carlos was the non-rancher of his family.  He liked chess, serious reading, and fine music.  He also had a macho attitude of a Latin leading man.  His conquests began in his mid-teens. By high school, Carlos Martinez knew where he was going and how to get there.  His ambition became to gain admission to a law college, pass the bar, and become a great lawyer. He was clever and brilliant and forceful, a rare combination for one so young.
• Father Sean Logan: Siobhan's brother.
• Hugh Mendenhall: A hefty, bubbly wizard of the polls.
• Rae O’Connell: Rita and Duncan's daughter. Rae, a successful, computer oriented businesswoman, had run the electronics at her dad’s Denver headquarters.
• Reynaldo Maldonado: Famed portrait artist and sculptor. Father of Rita. Reynaldo had built a magnificent A-frame home and studio on a plateau a mile down from the ranch. A widower, he had raised Rita with the help of a Mexican nanny. Maldonado’s home had become a sort of sanctuary for the high school children of the area.  He spun rapturous tales, he   sang and played the guitar, he had lots of nudes on his walls and pedestals.  For years Maldonado was an in-and-out figure at the University of Colorado, where he taught to small groups, at random, about an array of worldly subjects.
• Dwight Grassley: Short, round-faced, apple cheeked, with the pasty smile of an unfavorite son. Used the initial Bulldog/ Growler network. Inside the Republican Party, Dwight took on a role of what might be called a hatchet man. Thornton's brother-in-law. Grassley was a superb fund-raiser who bent and twisted the soft-money rules to their limits.
• Novinski: Squad Leader.
• Juan Martinez: Carlos' youngest brother. Was a rancher. Under the watch and direction of his father, Juan evolved to take over as foreman.
• Yuri Sokolov: Yuri Sokolov was a teenager when he escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and found his way to Jewish partisans operating in White Russia, east of Warsaw.  At the time the war ended, he was twenty-two and in command of four companies, and a whispered legend.
• Wayne White: Hoop Hooper’s attorney.
• Chad Murtha: Exhibitor of plastic, Teflon, titanium handguns, ammo, and clips. Heavy guy, big gut, used to wrestle professionally.  Blond hair, he dyes it, like sixty years old and usually wearing a baseball cap.
• Professor David Horowitz: Head of Slavic studies at New York University. David was much the scholar.  No siblings, both parents gone.  He had married, had a child, and divorced. Ben's father.
• King Porter: Longstanding leader of AMERIGUN. Porter was an unpleasant person, bully, and righteous defender of the Second Amendment. King Porter was bred and brewed as the middle and smallest male of nine stunted hillbilly kids.  In order to survive he had willed himself an aura of power through intimidation.  No one doubted he’d set them afire if angry enough.  With rage always near the surface he was able to gain mastery over his siblings. Once King had been a terrifying predator who gained his spurs in Congress by fear tactics.  His fall from grace only lathered up his innards for the moment of revenge. For two decades King Porter had been the “rock of ages,” cemented into bedrock with a fifty-foot-high, twenty-foot-thick brick wall enclosing his brain. King didn’t stand very tall in actuality.  Most people looking at eye level saw the naked crown of his head with an occasional upright hair from the horseshoe fringe.  His skin was stretched tightly over his face, flattening his cheeks into a mouth set with the left side of his face a fraction higher than the right.
• Justin Quinn: Daniel's buddy. Killed in Saipan. Justin was the oldest child in his family and grew to be able to handle his father. He never completed high school.
• Helena Baxter: One of Quinn's girlfriends. A Sharp CEO of a Denver-sized public relations firm.  She was twice divorced, with no children, and a pleasant and striking companion.
• Pedro Martinez: Caretaker of the M/M Ranch. Pedro served six years in the Navy.  He is from an old Colorado family, and he was wounded at Pearl Harbor. He’s blind in one eye. He used to be a hell-raising kid, too generous with money he didn’t have. Honest as Jesus.
• Red Peterson: An old West Texas wildcatter. His skin was spotted and wrinkled from too many years in the oil fields. He could let his eyelids drop in such a manner as to block him from looking on another’s eyes but at the same time look directly at you.
• Consuelo Martinez: Pedro's wife.
• Greta Peterson: Red Peterson's wife. Once among the most beautiful show girls in Vegas. Greta was still extremely beautiful, a Walkure, an Amazon.
• Hank Skelley: A revered old scout master.
• Dawn Mock: Head of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Dawn Mock, a mother of three and grandmother of six, was married to a retired detective who now ran a regional claims office of insurance adjusters. Dawn’s reputation on the Chicago police force had been gained as a forensics wizard.  Dr.  Mock’s books, speeches, seminars, and appearances as a trial witness outshone the people above her. At fifty-something she had remained extremely attractive, belying her years of police work.
• George Appleton: Highest-ranking penitentiary official. First Deputy Director, Marine Corps, 1978-1986, rank of major, Viet combat, decorated.
• Carter Carpenter: A hallowed father figure of the American media.
• Master Tech Sergeant Roosevelt Jarvis: Captain Novinski's backup man.
• Roy Sedgewick: Owns Ark Royal Arms Ltd.
• Maud Traynor: Maud Traynor was the lawyer and sole contact to The Combine.  She was a middle-aged, expensively dumpy woman.  Her language could startle a drunken sailor.
• Webster Penrose: Chief master of Colorado.
• Hoop Hooper: Former leader of the Wisconsin militia.
• Admiral Clearfield: Chief of Naval Operations.
• Admiral Hyman Rickover: Father of the nuclear submarine.
• Admiral Wall: The President’s personal physician.
• Aldo de Voto: The reigning conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. He’s a very charming guy with wife and kids safely tucked away in Spain.
• Alma: A robust former mezzo soprano.
• Anita McGlore: Works for NBC in Denver.
• Arne Skye: Roving special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Arne Skye is one of the big hitters in police world. Everything about Arne Skye was medium sized, except for his face.  It was a roadmap of past raids, of one who had spent a life in purgatory. Arne Skye had spent his life on the edge, sometimes completely ignoring his superiors, their mandate, and sometimes bypassing the odds.
• Bandar Barakat: He was one of the top intelligence people under the shah.  He smelled the ayatollahs taking power and turned double agent. Because of his Western intelligence contacts, he could still deliver information to the new regime. Barakat is an Arab.
• Ben Horowitz: Fairly well-known police detective.
• Billy Mitchell: Army Air Force general.
• Bonnar: Assemblyman.
• Brenda: Dwight's wife.
• Buck Jones: Grand Militia Sergeant.
• Candi: Stripper. Choo-Choos Sister.
• Captain Novinski: A weirdo; without whom nothing electronic was purchased by the Corps, found and installed and tested every system now in use or on the planning boards.
• Chad Humboldt: Senator. Chad Humboldt was a generations fixture supported by a sudden coalition of politicians in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and mighty Texas.
• Chance Spencer: Reporter for MS NBC.
• Charles Packard: Reporter for Reuters.
• Charlie Bethune: CIA chief.
• Charlotte Cassidy: Works for CBS in Memphis.
• Cherokee Cottrell: Claimed to be half Sioux; had been on the wagon for five years when Jeremiah pulled him from obscurity to pilot the SCARAB.
• Chester Skelley: Hank’s grandson and one of the most decorated scouts in the West.
• Chita Mendez: Works for Pueblo Chieftain.
• Choo-Choo: Stripper. Candi's sister.
• Christopher Christopher: Great old novelist. One had to go back a bit to remember Christopher’s last great novel. He had outlived his mediocre talent but knew the whens and hows.  He became a legend. These days he was an American icon (who once had tossed a chilled martini into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s face).  Now thatched with wild silver hair, he held forth at Lake George with a dozen “master” students conducting the eternal hunt for the great American novel.
• CiCi Tomtree: Pucky and Thorton's child. Flat in ambition, flat in achievement, great sailors and peacefully took their places in line on the inheritance ladder and went on to live flat wealthy lives with flat wealthy mates.
• Claus Von Manfried: Swiss banker.
• Cliff Morgan: Pilot.
• Cliff Romanowski: A married buddy of Daniel. Cliff had lost an arm in the earlier battle of Tarawa.
• Coach Boy: Baseball coach.
• Colonel Yancey Hawke: Head of the state troopers.
• Corinne: Cliff's wife. 6 months pregnant.
• Corporal Anwar Fellah: Part of the Command team.
• Darren Jessen: Jessup's younger brother.
• Detective Hymes: Helped with a gun bust.
• Detective Solomon: State trooper.
• Doc Blanchard: Attorney General.
• Don Fender: Works for CNN in Denver.
• Dr. Jacob Turnquist: Poll analyst.
• Dr.  Hans Neucamp: Dr.  Hans Neucamp, president of the Tomtree Foundation, was tired and sported squinting red eyes.
• Dr.  Leary: Doctor at St. Anne's Hospital.
• Dr.  Llewellyn Comfort: An eminent plastic surgeon who operated on Quinn.
• Dr.  Wheat: Doctor for the military.
• Duncan O'Connell: Rita and Quinn's son.
• Ebendick: Senator.
• Eric: Thornton's steward.
• Eric Cardinal Mueller: A dean and often spokesman.
• Father Mario Gallico: Taught Latin and ancient Greek at New York University. A strong servant for Cardinal Watts.
• Frank Piccola: Kid at Quinn's school.
• Franz Friehoff: Owner of the furniture outlet.
• General Bellicek: Chair of the Joint Chiefs.
• General Keith Brickhouse: Commandant. A gnarly specimen not unlike Duncan. Keith Brickhouse troweled on the mortar of honor and duty and set the bricks of responsibility on his shoulders.
• Grayson McKenney: Michigan governor.
• Gross: One of Daniel's army partners.
• Hall Carleton: A hall of fame football player turned actor in times past.
• Harmon: Senator.
• Helga: Lieutenant Smith’s wife.
• Henrietta Joslin: Reporter for CNN news.
• Henry Chin: CBI Internet buster.
• Henry Tomtree: Thornton's father. Henry Tomtree was the greatest junkyard dog the Northeast states ever had. Knew every scrap of metal, every bale of newspaper, and every dead battery and doorknob in his yard, and who could carry on business without calculator or ledger because he kept everything in his head.
• Hoyt: Air Force Commander
• J. Malcolm Dunlay: A former attorney general.
• Jan Masyryk: The Czech president, son of the father of his country.
• Jensen: Driver of contraband.
• Joan Peterson: Red and Greta's daughter.
• June Siddell: A New York Times correspondent.
• Kofski: A rookie on Dan's old beat. Kofski was all thumbs.
• Lapides: Secret Service Agent.
• Larry Merton: Reporter for KTM news.
• Lisa Wong: Glenwood Springs veterinarian. Asian-American.
• Lou Luenberger: Works for NBC in Denver.
• Louise Markham: Reporter for Washington Times.
• Lucas de Forest: Lucas de Forest, the nation’s first black FBI director, was Tomtree’s showpiece nominee.  He had returned the New Orleans Police Department to a position of respect and then done the same in Philadelphia.  Only thing about him, he was too damned assertive and at times played a bit loose with citizens’ rights.  He and Thornton had bucked heads on Internet issues. Lucas looked like a cop, and even more like a boxer, whose face had caught its fair share.  Yet he was a rock.
• Major Hugo Grubb: Another mustang on the SCARAB team. Field commander.
• Mandy: Quinn's kindly nurse who rubbed against him whenever the occasion presented itself.
• Marsh: Squad Leader.
• Marsha: Quinn's secretary.
• Mary Boedecker: Detective Lieutenant. Mary Boedecker was thin, fifty-something with black and gray hair pulled back in a penny-plain knot.
• Matt Hope: Thornton's Vice President. Former Texas senator. Matthew Hope a major concession to a very vocal Southern Christian coalition.
• Monsignor Gallico: Cardinal Watts’ closest aide. He is the diocese fixer.
• Morton Traynor: Labor lawyer. Maud Traynor's ex-husband.
• Moses Jefferson: Henry's father's partner. A black man. Moses was a spiritual gentleman who did odd jobs until he proved his true worth.  Moses entered a secret bid to demolish the old Williams Hotel.  His bid was lower than Henry Tomtree’s. Moses Jefferson possessed the keen mind of a junk dealer. Mo’s family originally came from a Portuguese colony in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa.
• Moshe Rosenthal: Used to be in a concentration camp. Does business with Red.
• Mr.  Dancy: Mr.  Dancy, a Mormon, knew every tree in the valley and beyond.  He was strikingly direct. A banker.
• Nini: Dwight's sister. Nini did everything right.  A Newport Yacht Club wedding to be forgotten as soon as the ice sculpture melted.  The couple were both homely but produced beautiful children.
• Old man Romero: Father of a police officer and Marine.
• Oswald “Wreck” Hudson: The White Wolf Brigade commander and ranch owner was a retired Army officer. Thin man, handlebar mustache in a struggle to get attention and to be brave.
• Pastor Ed Jenkins: The moderator of the White Aryan Christian Arrival.
• Paul Cardinal Watts: Archbishop of Brooklyn.
• Pearse: Daniel's brother.
• Penny: Dwight's sister. Penny, the barefoot, skinny-dipping contessa was not a bad artist, but she loved the many men who passed her way.  Three of them had left her bearing three quite different children.
• Potter Wesley: Southern Grand Dragon.
• Pucky: Thorton's wife. Dwight's sister. She was a long streaker, a tall, thin girl of five foot eleven.  She had a pleasant face, though her teeth were a mite large.  Pucky knew from her first boarding school what her route would be in the airless, closed Newport society. Looking closely at Pucky, one would see a personality bubbling like a newly opened bottle of Perrier.  Her body was thin but made the right slow turns at the right places, giving her a tall flow which she knew how to use. What seemed to be a shallow inlet was very deep, filled with disarming knowledge of a wide range of subjects.  Somewhere along the line Pucky became very comfortable with herself, and she stopped the bull-moose monetary charges of a number of the yacht club’s finest who tried to court or seduce her. She was far from invisible.  She sailed splendidly, was a charming hostess, a charity workaholic, and mainly—a force in the cultural life of the state, including the great jazz festival. Pucky simply had too much vitality.
• Randy: Dwight's gay significant other.
• Reb Butterworth: The Colorado National Guard commander.
• Reverend Amos Johnson: The surviving icon of the early civil rights movement.  He had risen to challenge for the presidency twice in primaries and walked off with eighteen percent of the vote.
• Richard Darling: Senator.
• Roby: Moses's wife. Cleaned houses.
• Rocco Lapides: Chief of the Secret Service presidential detail.
• Ropo: Squad Leader.
• Roscoe Quinn: Justin's father. A bad hombre. For a time the Malkovich brothers let him sharecrop and mine a claim.  Roscoe was a pig. He beat his wife and children, and played with his daughter. He’s in the state penitentiary in Canon City.  Twenty years.
• Saladin: The Moslem; was the true hero of the Crusades.
• Semper Fi: German shepherd.
• Sergeant Floyd: Grand Militia Sergeant.
• Sergeant Hap Cronin: State trooper.
• Shalom Katz: An illegal emigration agent, a Palestinian Jew. Shalom was a cop.
• Sinja Malkovich: Owner of the M/M. Tarka's brother. He and his brother were at war with everyone, and each other. Sinja ran the place into the ground in no time flat.
• Siobhan Logan: Daniel's wife. Her name is Irish for Jane.
• Sister Donna: Nun.
• Sol Lightner: Senator of North Carolina. Mr.  Powerhouse, undefeatable.  Heads the intelligence oversight and is the hit man on armed services.  Not friendly to the Corps. He’s been in the Senate over twenty years.
• Sumner Smith: Air Force Lieutenant was officer on duty at the small-craft section of the Rhein-Main air base.
• Tammy Peterson: Red and Greta's daughter.
• Tarka Malkovich: Owner of the M/M. Sinja's brother. Heavy drinker. Tarka died of a heart attack, undoubtedly from drink. He and his brother were at war with everyone, and each other.
• Thornton Tomtree: AKA 'T3'. Thornton Tomtree was a shy lad.  Hanging out at the yard was his main form of recreation. Thornton Tomtree grew gangly like his father, with a permanent aura of nerdiness about him, although he was wiry and very strong from slinging bales of newsprint and handling scrap metal.  It seemed early that shaping Thornton’s personality—or lack of it—would become a lifetime mission for Darnell. Thornton Tomtree was awkward, not dumb. When Thornton Tomtree graduated Pawtucket High, they named a science medal after him.
• Todd Wetmore IV: A Harvard failure; a super talent with something to prove to his family, came in as copilot and navigator.
• Tony Rizzoli: White House Chief of Staff.
• Vincent Zac: Special Counsel. Formfitting suit, Hoover collar, and the big mustache that small men of the world wear to send a message of their macho.
• Volkovitch: Part of the Command team.

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Denver
• Colorado
• New York
• America
• Washington
• White House
• United States
• Urbakkan
• Troublesome Mesa
• Brooklyn
• Mexico
• Chicago
• Pawtucket
• Houston
• Wisconsin
• Iran
• Texas
• Bloody Gulch
• Venice
• Utah
• Saipan
• Manhattan
• Arne Skye
• San Diego
• Newport
• Mississippi
• Florida
• Russia
• China
• Tennessee
• Longacre
• Kansas
• Europe
• Dawn
• Teheran
• Boulder
• Harvard
• California
• Thomton
• Iowa
• Colon
• Maryland
• Frankfurt
• Oklahoma
• Tarawa
• San Francisco

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Politics and Government: Describe this theme.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Leon Uris (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

The reading level, and content, is definitely written for an adult.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Political
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history