When best friends Cameron and Harold return from World War II, they begin to pursue their dream of building families and community. Their business thrives, their wives are best friends, and their children bright and interesting. But the children grow up in turbulent times, influenced by the chaos of the Sixties, Vietnam, and the country’s growing polarization. Cameron’s younger son becomes a spy, Harold’s older daughter leaves her children for a new life as a spiritual teacher, and his only son capitalizes on his army service to launch a writing career. The End of the Empire is an eight-decade saga of these two families which parallels the trajectory of the nation.

 

Author Keith Loveland’s complex and interconnected characters take the reader from the suburbs of Minneapolis to the State Department in Washington, D.C., to the hardscrabble hills of Appalachia, down winding streets in Bulgaria, and into the mountains of Afghanistan.

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​The End of the Empire is a rich exploration of the changing values that have shaped our country since the Second World War, particularly what people love, whom they love, and how far they will go to find and protect that.

 

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