Perilous Assurance

PERILOUS ASSURANCE takes place in 1969, against the backdrop of escalating civil unrest over the Vietnam war. Mattie O'Keeffe Shaw, a professor of art history at Brooksford College in the small town of Brooksford, New Hampshire, south of the White Mountains, worriedly leaves her on-campus residence to check on students who she knew had planned a protest on the quad. While walking around the small group of chanting and poster-waving students, she happens to meet Clayton Payne Adamore, and immediately dislikes his over-bearing attitude and wonders why he is there, since he doesn't fit in with the younger protesters. She wonders if he's a government agent spying on the students, or perhaps, an outside agitator. Mattie has not formed an opinion of the war, and is more concerned about her job and students' safety than politics at that point in her life, but as time passes, to her dismay, finds that she is drawn into the fray.