Alternative History

Kevin Finn and Susan Sloate blend fact and fiction in a novel about the Kennedy assassination.

By: Susan Van Dongen

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

"Knowing what we know now, it’s impossible that somebody higher up couldn’t have stepped in to prevent this," says East Windsor resident Kevin Flynn, co-author of Forward to Camelot, a novel about the Kennedy assassination. "There’s a wealth of information (indicating) this had to be a conspiracy."

   Type "Kennedy Assassination Theories" into Google and you’ll get a few hundred results. Call up any one of these sites and there will be links to a myriad more. There are even conventions and symposiums that attract Kennedy buffs, conspiracy theorists and serious historians.
   More than 40 years have passed since President John F. Kennedy was killed, but fascination over the mystery just seems to keep growing. East Windsor resident Kevin Finn wasn’t even born at the time of the shooting, yet he’s been captivated by the young president’s life and death almost since he can remember.
   "Being Irish Catholic, my parents always spoke about Kennedy — I was always exposed to the myth," says Mr. Finn, 39. "There was a picture of Kennedy hanging outside my bedroom for years, in fact."
   Born in the Bronx, Mr. Finn’s interest in Kennedy began at age 7, when he hid in his aunt’s basement, reading John F. Kennedy and PT-109 during family gatherings.
   "It picked up from there," he says. "I suppose (to my family) Kennedy was someone who symbolized hope and a better way of life. I was always interested in doing something meaningful, surrounding the circumstances of what happened to him."
   When Mr. Finn grew up to be a news producer, screenwriter and script analyst, it was a natural fit for him to turn his lifelong curiosity about Kennedy into a work of fiction. After years of research, Mr. Finn and co-author Susan Sloate have published Forward to Camelot (1stBooks Library, $35.95), providing more food for thought about what happened in Dallas in November, 1963.

   Centered on the assassination, the alternative history novel is a meticulous blend of fact and fiction. Ms. Sloate, who began research eight years ago, first got the idea after viewing Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK.
   "Susan was so impacted by what she saw, she started to wonder whether the killing could have been prevented," Mr. Finn says.
   Ms. Sloate imagined a plot where Cady Cuyler — a female character from the year 2000 — is recruited to time-travel back to Dallas in November 1963 and recover Kennedy’s personal Bible. It was used to swear in Lyndon Johnson as President aboard Air Force One after the assassination but later disappeared. Now it is a priceless artifact.
   The story also touches on Cady’s father, who disappeared the day Kennedy died. Cady’s personal mission is to go back in time and solve that mystery, yet she finds herself uncovering dangerous information connected to the killing of the President as well, and struggles to intercept the circumstances leading to the assassination. An unlikely ally — Lee Harvey Oswald — aids her.
   Mr. Finn believes this novel is the first that puts Oswald in a positive light, portraying him as an intelligent man and a patriot who was manipulated by the CIA and other shadowy U.S. government forces. The authors also draw similarities between Oswald and Kennedy.
   Ms. Sloate and Mr. Finn devoured hundreds of books and articles about Kennedy’s death and spent quite a bit of time fleshing out exactly what role Oswald might have played in the assassination.
   "We (speculated) that Oswald was to be installed in Cuba as an undercover operative like he was in Russia," Mr. Finn says. "Evidence points that he had worked as a government plant. We imagined his own belief would be that he would go to Cuba (after the assassination) to provide feedback to U.S. authorities. But before he could complete his role he was framed and killed."
   The authors absolutely believe that, given the wealth of warnings about the possibility of a presidential shooting, Kennedy might have survived the trip to Texas. In fact, Mr. Finn says Oswald himself tried to warn the government about the assassination, but the intelligence he provided was destroyed by parties who might have been implicated in a murder plot.
   "Knowing what we know now, it’s impossible that somebody higher up couldn’t have stepped in to prevent this," Mr. Finn says. "There’s a wealth of information (indicating) this had to be a conspiracy."
   Perhaps because he survived the PT-109 incident and endured excruciating back pain for so many years, Kennedy was philosophical about the possibility of dying young.
   "He had been in great pain for a long time and was given Last Rites several times before he was assassinated," Mr. Finn says. "He wrote in letters to friends that he wouldn’t be on Earth much longer. That he survived for so long is amazing. We’ve learned that he had to self-administer the injections to control his back pain — in fact, he gave himself a shot right in front of a reporter."
   Mr. Finn and Ms. Sloate also found information suggesting Kennedy had Addison’s disease, a rare endocrine or hormonal disorder which impedes the body’s production of cortisol — a natural pain-blocker. The disease also is characterized by muscle weakness and fatigue, quite the opposite picture that comes to mind when we envision the public image of a youthful, vigorous President.
   "The Addison’s disease contributed to the existing deterioration to Kennedy’s body," Mr. Finn says. "(We learned) that Joe Kennedy kept various medications in bank vaults throughout the world should Kennedy need them. (I believe) these were to treat the Addison’s disease."
   Mr. Finn began writing as a sports and news writer-producer for a New York cable television outlet in 1982, just six months after graduating from high school. With a lifelong passion for film, he turned to screenwriting in 1986 and became a script reader and analyst for the American Film Institute Writers Workshop program.
   Screenwriting brought Mr. Finn and Ms. Sloate together in 1992 and launched them as a writing team. However, except for a few face-to-face meetings during the last decade, their work has been done via regular mail, e-mail and telephone. While they were pulling their research together and developing the plot to their novel, Mr. Finn and Ms. Sloate, who lives in Chicago, spent as much as five hours a night on the phone.
   "Writing as a team is a challenge at first," Mr. Finn says. "Everyone has their own ideas, and you have to mesh with their style. But after working together for so long we can finish one another’s thoughts. The great thing is that we’re each strongest where the other is weakest. Susan is the ‘big hitter’ — she’s good with character and plot development, and I’m good at creating small moments in the story that will lure the reader in better. We’re both very character-driven with our writing, though, which remains consistent throughout the story."
   With time-travel and fantasy being so popular on the big screen, Mr. Finn and Ms. Sloate are excited about the prospect of adapting Forward to Camelot into a movie — with plenty of artistic control.
   "Susan and I want to turn this into a screenplay and we do have some interest, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed," Mr. Finn says. "But we’d like to write the screenplay ourselves and present it in the proper context. We took such great pains to make sure we didn’t meddle with the facts. We don’t think there are many (screenwriters) who could rewrite it as entertainingly as we did."
Forward to Camelot (1stBooks Library, hardcover, $35.95; paperback, $24.95), by Kevin Finn and Susan Sloate, is available on the Web: www.forwardtocamelot.com or www.1stbooks.com. E-mail: [email protected].