Citadel on the mountain

"Domineering and driven, an intelligence specialist for the U.S. government, Ted Wertime finds himself eager to control the destinies of his four sons - both sexually and professionally - as he moves toward retirement. In harrowing scenes at once terrible and riotous, his second son, Richard, shows himself (and others in his family) succumbing to his father's hypnotic powers.". "Ted Wertime's final achievement is to build a peculiar citadel on a Pennsylvania mountaintop. Having forged a second career as a noted historian of early technology, and having even gained the ear of The Washington Post, Wertime in retirement becomes the promulgator of doomsday pronouncements. When he recognizes that his message is not being heeded, he becomes convinced that it is going to take a violent revolution to cleanse the whole country. He will head this revolution; and his sons, of course, will join him (huddled with their families into his mountaintop fortress) as his allies and lieutenants."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.