The Pragmatic Reformer
By Allen Sacco
A gripping historical thriller about Lt. Cmdr. Alan Reed's fight to expose the truth behind the 1954 USS Bennington disaster—a devastating explosion that claimed 103 lives and ignited a decades-long battle for justice.
Lt. Cmdr. Alan Reed stood stiffly in the waiting room of the Third Naval District Headquarters in New York City. His crisp summer whites felt less like a uniform and more like borrowed skin, thin and uncomfortable in the sterile air.
Chapter 2 PREVIEWThe smell of the New York Naval Shipyard's records division was a complex, aggressive odor: dust, mildew, and the metallic tang of old neglect, a scent spanning many years. Reed was hunting more than just paperwork—he was attempting to trace the genesis of a historical fraud.
Chapter 3 PREVIEWThe memory was not a linear sequence of events; it was a sensory tidal wave, relentless and metallic. Frank Mares knew the USS Bennington's engine room better than he knew his own scarred hands. Then the explosion fractured everything.
Chapter 4 PREVIEWReed had spent a grueling week in the administrative bowels of the New York Naval Shipyard, fighting the Archival Compromise on its home turf. Then he found it—the smoking gun that proved the explosion was an accepted risk, not an accident.
Chapter 5 PREVIEWThe New York Naval Shipyard was a gritty maze of steel and sweat. The USS Bennington lay below, a vast wounded whale of steel undergoing preliminary refitting. Reed carried proof of the institutional lie in his jacket pocket.