Long Journey Home Query Letter
Agent Spock
Spock and Associates
1234 5th Ave
New York, NY
Dear Ms. Spock,
Twenty-eight-year-old Dean Spalding is hiking the El Camino de Santiago del Norte on a pilgrimage across the barren but beautiful Basque country of Spain. On a sabbatical from the Munich consulate, Dean is forcefully recruited by the CIA and his adventure morphs into a surprising and uncertain trail through the deep and opaque world of the Cold War. Where stones have ears, walls eyes, phones infested and uncertain friendships are the norm.
Spain, 1978, Franco has been dead three years and the country struggles with its new government. The Politburo and Washington angle for control of the fledgling democracy. Dean encounters Soviet spies and provocateurs, Basque ETA terrorists, bandits and other characters during his journey. From the hilarious Friar John to the homicidal Jaime Ramón Mercader who is responsible for the murder of Dean’s brother the narrative is rich with unusual people.
Through a series of contacts with others in the international intelligence community, Dean begins to piece together a sinister plot forming in Moscow. The Soviets are developing an electromagnetic weapon so powerful it will destroy the west. But the information is incomplete and despite a sprained ankle, he must continue. One contact leads to another along the Camino to Santiago de Compostela where the final piece to the Soviet plot awaits.
Dean falls for Mary Cavendish, a beautiful graduate student on her own journey to Santiago. Like Dean, Mary is a southerner but Dean must keep the nature of his mission from her. He worries for her safety and eventually slips away in despair.
Fans of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, Alan Jacobson’s The Lost Codex, Robert Masello’s The Einstein Prophecy, and Steve Berry’s the 14th Colony will enjoy this story.
The Long Journey Home - A War Time Pilgrimage is a 105,500-word commercial fiction.
I spent over twenty years a tech writer, a songwriter and have posted short stories on my blog. I published an eBook, The Rhythm of the Stone - Collateral Damage, available on Amazon.
I thank you for your time and consideration to represent me.
James H. Bird III
500 B W. Carroll St.
Tullahoma, TN 37388
(830) 220-1031
