The Accidental American

"The Accidental American" vividly illustrates the challenges and contradictions of U.S. immigration policy, and argues that, just as there is a free flow of capital in the world economy, there should be a free flow of labor.

Forced out of a self-imposed exile, one woman faces a lifetime’s worth of secrets and betrayal–all in the name of staying alive. Nicole Blake had planned to leave her criminal life in the past. She had done her time in a dank prison in Marseille and relinquished the world of forgery and counterfeiting for an unassuming career as a freelance consultant. Now her world is a small farm in the French Pyrenees, with daily fresh eggs and the companionship of her devoted dog. But when U.S. intelligence operative John Valsamis shows up at her door, Nicole is reminded that she’ll always be an ex-con. Valsamis is after Nicole’s former lover, Rahim Ali, and soon Nicole finds herself back in Lisbon, tracking down Rahim in all their old haunts. Except now Rahim isn’t just a document forger–he’s a suspected terrorist. Unwittingly drawn into an international web of fundamentalism, crime, and corruption, Nicole discovers that its threads stretch from the cobbled streets of Lisbon to the once-beautiful city of her birth, Beirut, and to the top levels of the government that sent Valsamis to find her. And as with any good web, the harder Nicole fights to free herself, the tighter it closes around her.

Leaving behind a career as a master forger, Nicole Blake's peaceful life in rural France is interrupted by the arrival of a U.S. intelligence operative, John Valsamis, who warns her that her former lover Rahim has become a terrorist and seeks her reluctant assistance in bringing him down. Original. 30,000 first printing.

"The Accidental American" vividly illustrates the challenges and contradictions of U.S. immigration policy, and argues that, just as there is a free flow of capital in the world economy, there should be a free flow of labor.

The Accidental American is a look at the underside of 17th century America, the adventure tale of a British lad who is rescued at sea by Captain Kidd, jumps ship in Charleston and makes his precarious way to New York, where he is reclaimed by Captain Kidd; falls in love with Kidd's young wife, Sarah, who instructs him in the myriad ways of love, short of sinful fornication. When Kidd goes back to privateering he, knowing of his young wife's feeling for Christopher, insists that he come along. As history tells us, the expedition ends badly for Kidd, but not for Christopher, who is freed from prison by his father and introduced to the son he did not know he had. Returning to New York with his son, he marries Sarah and they retire to a peaceful life in New Jersey.

An Accidental American recalls life in Hitlers Germany, as seen through the eyes of a young girl who later escapes to the United States with her parents. The book tells of kind neighbors, an unforgettable ocean voyage, and bed bugs in Chicago, among other memories.