Lake Placid, 1982: Backcountry editor Walter Loving picks up a top-coated stranger hitchhiking in the snow outside the Casa del Sol restaurant. It is two years after the Soviet Union's loss to the U.S. in the “Miracle On Ice” Winter Olympic hockey game. The hitchhiker lights a French cigarette and tells Walter he is the “manager” of a visiting Red Army B-team, whose players have kicked him out of the van in the snow.

But the manager is really a spy obsessed with restoring Soviet dominance in ice sports. His lover is a spectacular Olympic figure skater fond of quoting the poet Anna Akhmatova. Together they invade and complicate Walt’s life in ways that test his reserves of courage and resourcefulness, with far reaching effects.

The Manager isn't a typical spy novel, though lines are crossed at great risk and stakes are high. It is above all a novel of the Adirondacks, a novel of relationships, and of love and its varieties.   

It is also a novel of the environment. Aging radicals and Indigenous activists fight massive hydro development and a pipeline, with scenes in Siberia, Montreal, northern Quebec, Sarajevo.

The Manager is funny, irreverent, satirical, earthy, with bad behaviors and common profanities, persistent terrible decision making, unethical journalism, the common sadnesses of illness, death, failure, loss, and change.

The Manager is Christopher Shaw's third Adirondacks book since 2021. He is a former editor of Adirondack Life, whose books include Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip With the Gods (W.W. Norton, 2000), The Power Line, and The Crazy Wisdom. He taught writing at Middlebury College for twenty years.

“I love it. Abbey meets Vonnegut.” Bill McKibben

“Fast paced, with colorful characters and dramatic twists and turns that keep you hooked. You will love this book.” Dr. Curt Stager, Still Waters, Your Atomic Self

“"Wow, and I thought Chris Shaw's The Power Line was nervy!” Amy Godine, The Black Woods

"A thoroughly engaging romp. I Loved it.” John Ernst, co-owner Elk Lake Lodge

More LOVE for The Manager- click here

Look for The Manager in Spring 2025 at your local indie bookstore, on Amazon, or at cshaw.net

$23.95 soft cover. 312 pages. ISBN: 978197727624. Available from Ingram.