Eugene Cowen

My Life, a Novel Eugene Cowen

This unique book moves rhythmically between fact andfiction. Gene Cowen writes one chapter of his own life, then switches tofiction, and then back again to fact. He starts with his life as an Air Corps combatnavigator during World War II. In a fiction chapter, his alter ego, Navigator,is shot down and rescued by an Italian family and their daughter Maria. Helater meets Maria as a Rome prostitute. Navigator gets Maria out of the whoringbusiness and she falls in love with him. Cowen, in real life, then becomes ajournalist in the U. S., later works in Congress, then the White House. Infiction, Maria, now married to someone else, follows Navigator to Washington. Her husband gets involved with extremists, who put a Mob contract on his life,and then he becomes a conspirator of the Watergate burglars. Navigator works adeal with a Mob boss to save Maria's husband's life, and later coaches him onhow to get out of Watergate break-in charges. Throughout this there is the tension of unrequitedlove and the ominous presence of a Mob gunman. Maria is in love with Navigator. But he is married and loves her, "but not quite the same way." The gunman,deflected by the Mob boss, lurks in the background. Gene Cowen writes a unique story of his own life andfantasizes on what might have been, what could have been.