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"Oswald's Tale" is a remarkable book. Pulitzer Prize winning author Norman Mailer turned his attention to the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President Kennedy in 1963. But in preparing the book, Mailer took advantage of a unique historical fact. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the author was able to perform interviews with people who had known Oswald at the age of 19 during the nearly three year he lived in Russia after defecting in 1959.

The book benefits from a remarkable amount of new information. Mailer received access to the KGB's transcripts from their surveillance on young Oswald. Mailer also interviews the family members of Marina Prusakova, the 19-year-old who eventually married Oswald, as well as his co-workers at the factory where he worked in Minsk. Mailer used the same research assistant who'd helped him write his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Executioner's Song," about convicted killer Gary Gilmore (who received the death penalty in 1977). At a personal appearance in 1995, Mailer joked that he was mildly distressed when his researcher would ask the subjects questions when he still had so many good questions of his own.

Conspiracy theorists have a special interest in the work, of course: trying to determine whether Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy against the President. Ultimately the KGB transcripts only show that young Oswald argued with his wife about money, just like any young couple would do. A minor scene takes on larger significant when Oswald's co-workers remember that they teased him for being clumsy during a weekend hunting trip. Mailer originally believed that Oswald must've been part of a conspiracy, but after researching his life decided the man acted alone. He reported proudly that a another trusted friend, after reading the book, reached the opposite conclusion

It's perhaps the greatest compliment of all. The book's "naturalistic" style creates a portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald - but it only adds a greater context to the larger unsolved mystery. The book captures many colorful details about the Oswald's life, and they're skillfully woven together by a talented novelist. The life stories from Russia create an amazingly vivid portrait of the world in 1959. But the significant details and the insignificant ones create a very poignant counterpoint to the historical tragedy which must inevitably follow.

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