âKati Martonâs True Believer is a true story of intrigue, treachery, murder, torture, fascism, and an unshakable faith in the ideals of CommunismâŚ.A fresh take on espionage activities from a critical period of historyâ (Washington Independent Review of Books).
True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American who spied for Stalin during the 1930s and forties. Later, a pawn in Stalinâs sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.
How does an Ivy League-educated, US State Department employee, deeply rooted in American culture and history, become a hardcore Stalinist? The 1930s, when Noel Field joined the secret underground of the International Communist Movement, were a time of national collapse. Communism promised the righting of social and political wrongs and many in Fieldâs generation were seduced by its siren song. Few, however, went as far as Noel Field in betraying their own country.
With a reporterâs eye for detail, and a historianâs grasp of the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, Kati Marton, in a ârelevantâŚfascinatingâŚvividly reconstructedâ (The New York Times Book Review) account, captures Fieldâs riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. True Believer is supported by unprecedented access to Field family correspondence, Soviet Secret Police records, and reporting on key players from Alger Hiss, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and World War II spy master, âWild Billâ Donovanâto the most sinister of all: Josef Stalin. âRelevant today as a tale of fanaticism and the lengths it can take one toâ (Publishers Weekly), True Believer is âriveting readingâ (USA TODAY), an astonishing real-life spy thriller, filled with danger, misplaced loyalties, betrayal, treachery, and pure evil, with a plot twist worthy of John le CarrĂŠ.