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Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter

The Palace Council of Stephen L. Carter's novel is a secret society of wealthy and powerful African-American men who launch a plan in 1952 to achieve their desired goals. The narrator of the novel, Eddie Wesley, is a novelist and journalist whose success lets him move through influential circles. He pines for his true love, Aurelia Treene, who is betrothed to another man. His sister, Junie, disappears to join an underground guerrilla group. When Eddie stumbles across the corpse of a powerful man, he begins to delve into unanswered questions. His quest to find answers, and his sister, Junie, takes over two decades and has him meeting with famous powerful men of the time like J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Palace Council has received mostly positive reviews with the Washington Post saying, "Eddie Wesley is an original and engaging character, a writer who resists being cast as some kind of official ethnic spokesman or predictable polemicist. In the end, he cracks open the mystery of the Palace Council by knowing more about John Milton than he does about Frantz Fanon -- a last twist in a mystery that will give a surprising jolt to your conscience."