Take Home Tuesday - Hosted by Guest Blogger David Cristofano

UPDATE: The winner of an autographed copy of THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE is Windy!!! Congrats! Please email your physical address to contests @ knightagency.net (remove the spaces). Thank you to everyone who participated! Hope to see you all next Tuesday for another great giveaway!!

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.

When I tell people that my novel has a great deal to do with the government, I get a blank stare, as though I’d said I’d written a story about the intricacies of picking trash off the shoreline at Myrtle Beach. Where’s the fun in a bureaucracy? I can’t blame them; I’ve worked for the Federal Government for most of my adult career and I understand their opinion.

Most of the time, getting involved with the government means something has gone wrong. The Social Security Administration only gets (and gives) attention when your check is missing/wrong/shredded. The IRS? No one wants attention from those folks under any circumstances. Is the FBI knocking your door down? Well, then . . . I suppose you have issues.

But what if you are in witness protection? That is a true case of we’re from the government, and we’re here to help. If something were to go awry, how grateful you would be to see them! In my novel, THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE (Grand Central Publishing, March 2009), I tell the story of a woman struggling through a life of anonymity generated out of this program. But there is another theme present: I tried to uncover not only the amazing machinery that makes the Federal Witness Protection Program a success, but the struggles that the people behind that machinery—the U.S. Marshals and the feds at Justice—face, on every level: personally, professionally, and morally. It is easy for Melody (the aforementioned GIRL) to be critical of the system because they cannot deliver the product she really desires: freedom. That doesn’t change the fact that the product they do deliver is unimaginable—or at least was until the late 1960’s when a man at the Department of Justice named Gerald Shur conceived the idea to much criticism.

Okay, see . . . you’ve got that blank look.

Imagine going to the head of the Justice Department and suggesting you have this idea to make witnesses more likely to testify, and the way you plan on achieving this is by having the government make them disappear afterwards. This is 1968, now. No Internet. No sophisticated communication equipment or surveillance tools. No relationships with banks or corporations or local governments to aid the vanishing.

But now we’re in 2009. Imagine what can be done. Anything is possible. You can be re-created twice in 24 hours. You can be—electronically—in more than one place at a time. And have you seen what professional make-up artists can do now?

I hope the day never comes when the United States Marshals Service is escorting you from one location to another, but should you find yourself there, trust these folks when they arrive on your doorstep. They’re from the government, and they’re there to help. Really.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. Leave your name in the comments and enter to win a signed copy of THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE. The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon!

www.DavidCristofano.com