My first thought after reading the Prologue to THE AMERICAN MISSION was How did things get so messed up? There is a long answer to that question, going all the way back to the 1950s, and probably before. What author Matthew Palmer does is take readers and parades a series of unfortunate and uncomfortable truths in front of them in the form of a work of fiction cataloging events and places that are all too real.

THE AMERICAN MISSION begins with a massacre, pure and simple. Besides being a stark reminder of what occurs when a population is disarmed as the result of administrative fiat, it also serves as the rough introduction to Alex Baines, who can do almost nothing but watch helplessly. Baines, a Foreign Service Officer whose career had been on an upward trajectory, is traumatized by the event, and as a result gets his security clearance revoked. Busted down to a glorified clerical position consisting of little more than finding reasons to deny tourist visas to the United States, Baines is a correspondence away from accepting a position with a private company. Salvation occurs, however, when he is tapped to be the political counselor for Howard Spencer, his old friend and mentor who just happens to be the United States Ambassador to the Congo.

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution to any of the problems presented in THE AMERICAN MISSION, and one can only hope that Palmer will explore these and other issues in future novels."

The counselor position suddenly opened and could not have done so at a worse time: an American survey team working with Consolidated Mining, a powerful and influential U.S.-based company, has been taken prisoner by a Congolese rebel army known as the Hammer of God. The charismatic leader of the Hammer is demanding $35 million and the withdrawal of all UN forces, as well as all Western oil and mining companies, from the eastern Congo. Baines’s baptism by fire, within a few hours of his appointment, involves handling the negotiations.

What is truly occurring, though, is even more complicated and dangerous than it appears at first blush. Baines is supposed to represent the interest of the United States, but finds those interests to be intertwined with those of Consolidated Mining, which in turn may be exploiting the Congolese people. Baines finds himself caught between opposing and conflicting forces in a situation in which there are no easy answers. Meanwhile, the lives of American citizens and Congolese residents are in danger.

If there is a way out of this predicament, Baines is going to have to stay true to his own conscience and values, something that indirectly caused his prior fall from grace to begin with. Yet even his own core beliefs may not be a proper guide as he attempts to navigate his way through a situation whose tangled roots took hold decades before he was born. He ultimately finds that he must get his own hands dirty --- literally --- if he is going to make a difference and complete the job with which he is tasked.

Palmer has worked in the U.S. Foreign Service for some two decades, with part of that service dealing in the ongoing, seemingly eternal quagmire of African affairs. Thus he knows that of which he speaks, to the extent that one wonders how much of what occurs here is fiction and how much Palmer witnessed firsthand. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to any of the problems presented in THE AMERICAN MISSION, and one can only hope that Palmer will explore these and other issues in future novels.