Today, a book you may or may not have heard of called American Sons: The Untold Story of the Falcon and the Snowman was released in audiobook format. It was co-written by Christopher Boyce (yes, that Christopher Boyce, the eponymous “Falcon” from The Falcon and the Snowman) and chronicles his 25-year imprisonment for selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
If you’re already sold and just want to know where to find it, go here. Otherwise, keep reading. I’ll see what I can do to convince you that listening to the audiobook will be the best fourteen hours you’ll ever spend having someone read to you.
American Sons is the literary sequel to Robert Lindsey’s The Falcon and the Snowman. It is also a direct sequel to the 1985 movie of the same name, which you may recall starred Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn at the peak of their respective fame curves.
If you haven’t already seen the movie, you should. It’s an important one. Plus, it has a great soundtrack. It’s also not hard to find. Ever since the Edward Snowden story broke and people began drawing comparisons between him and Christopher Boyce, it’s been on constant cable rotation. If you haven’t read the original Robert Lindsey book, you could, but you don’t necessarily have to—American Sons works well as a stand-alone book that recounts the events in the lives of two twenty-something kids who got caught with their hands in the U.S. intelligence cookie jar . . . and spent decades in prison for their crime.
As anyone who’s already read the book will tell you, that’s certainly not all there is to the story. American Sons was co-written by Cait Boyce, the former paralegal who represented Boyce and Lee for parole and wound up marrying the Falcon upon his release from prison. Her story, which is quite possibly even more compelling than that of the Falcon and Snowman themselves, brings an added dimension to this all-true tale of survival and, ultimately, redemption.
The American Sons audiobook was produced and published by Tantor Audio, the company responsible for audiobooks for Orange is the New Black, Twelve Years a Slave, and The Disaster Artist among many others. It is read by the real-life husband and wife team of David Colacci and Susan Ericksen. It is available now from Audible and Amazon. Race you there.
AMERICAN SONS 