Central Exposure

They thought they were on a singing tour. They were the cover story.

A tale of music, misadventure, and the untold battles of the Cold War.

In 1973, four naïve theater students from a small Catholic university are handed the opportunity of a lifetime: a State Department cultural-goodwill tour, performing Godspell across Central America. It begins like a musical — young artists carrying Broadway to bustling capitals and remote villages, one standing ovation after another. It ends like a spy thriller.

Because their tour runs on something other than applause. Every hotel faces a port where "agricultural equipment" is unloaded at midnight; their impossibly calm handler, Simon, is never in the room until he is; their cultural attaché changes her accent with the border. Somewhere between the standing ovations and the missing journalists — between a drug lord's bat-infested opera house, a game show where they merrily confess to espionage, and an earthquake that brings down more than just the house — the quartet realizes their production is the perfect cover for a show they never auditioned for. They aren't performing the distraction. They are it — the innocent, singing misdirection while the CIA and a fruit company quietly rearrange a continent. And in 1973's Central America, missing your cue can mean more than a bad review.

Blending wit, suspense, and real buried history, Central Exposure is a fast-paced, vividly told story that leaves readers both singing along and thoughtfully reflective — the absurdity and humanity of young dreamers caught in forces far beyond their control, discovering the world, and themselves, at once. Perfect for fans of Catch-22, Our Man in Havana, and The Americans.