Shattered Covenants: Book One

Present & Past Imperfect is the first book in a series of seven novels entitled Shattered Covenants which  narrates  the formation, rise, decline and fall of McKenzie Barber, a global management consulting firm.

Present & Past Imperfect takes place during a single week in November 1987 with flashbacks to the founding and organizational evolution of McKenzie Barber. The reader meets John McKenzie, the founding father of the discipline of management consulting

and tracks the ascendancy of Ernie Grey as John McKenzie’s successor to the November  1987 reality of a faltering enterprise under the leadership in the post-Ernie Grey era.

The central character of Present & Past Imperfect is Joe Baxter, an executive compensation consulting partner, who is trying to hold his place in the structure of  a firm with shifting leadership and political tides.

The reader is introduced to a number of  memorable characters which include Hamilton Burke III, a swashbuckling former Green Beret , who competes for Chairman succession

at McKenzie Barber only to fall short;  Clyde Nickerson, the ultimate bureaucratic villain;  Bridgette, Baxter’s high powered retailing executive wife;  Leon Harwell , a legendary investor; Hakim Selim, Harwell’s wily investment manager; Dominique de Hartog, once a McKenzie Barber consultant, now a corporate predator;  Stephany Hart, an arrogant Wall Street  industry Analyst;  Bonnie Grow, an ambitious young consultant; Frank Alvardi, Baxter’s mentor and Joe DiMaggio look-alike; Jon Grunwaldyt, the ultimate organization politician; and Lon MacMasters, who has  been parachuted in to bring financial discipline to the sliding performance of  McKenzie Barber’s  New York office.

The remaining books in the Shattered Covenants series include:

Ø      The Road to McKenzie Barber

Ø      The Consultant

Ø      The Chairman

Ø      The Partner

Ø      The House of Harwell

Ø      Twilight & Endgame

Shattered Covenants offers a sweeping look at men and women’s careers in business organizations, the quest for power, recognition, and career survival, and may represent the ultimate business fiction  of  the Twenty-first Century.

Dwight Foster, the author of Shattered Covenants, is a native of Minnesota who transferred to New York City in 1980. He retired as a consulting partner from an international public accounting firm  in January 1990 to form an executive search firm.

Shattered Covenants is a first novel, which represents an eight year writing project dealing with the passing of leadership in a professional services firm. Present & Past Imperfect is the initial  book in a series of free standing novels narrating the formation, rise, decline, and fall of  McKenzie Barber, a fictional global management consulting firm.

Later  books in the series include:

Ø      The Road to McKenzie Barber

Ø      The Consultant

Ø      The Chairman

Ø      The Partner

Ø      The House of Harwell

Ø      Twilight & Endgame

Shattered Covenants deals with the  passing of CEOs (i.e. kings) and their ultimate effect on the careers and lives of the courtiers, and rank and file professionals who follow the leadership of the CEO.

The author has spent his business career in the consulting industry, and for the past twelve years, has headed up a well-recognized executive search firm. Dwight Foster has published previously in management studies and magazine articles and is quoted from time to time in the national press. His experience in the practice of executive search and familiarity with  organization and business models over the past thirty years provided the motivation to write a sweeping novel. The primary narrator of Shattered Covenants, Joseph Baxter, Jr., is the son of a labor martyr from Minnesota’s Iron Range who rises to a Board Room world traveling, executive compensation consultant. Baxter is a modern day Candide who develops the cunning to survive in a ruthlessly competitive business world.

Dwight Foster is a University of Minnesota Alumnus, the father of two adult children, and is married to Dorothy Choitz Foster, a well-known journalist and consultant to the cosmetics and fragrance industry. The Fosters make their home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.