Spanning the underworld haunts of Montreal to Havana and Miami in the
early days of the Cold War, Satellite Boy reveals the unlikely
connection between an audacious bank heist and the "other Space Race"
that gave birth to the modern communication age
On April 6, 1965, Georges Lemay was relaxing on his yacht in a south
Florida marina following one of the largest and most daring bank heists
in Canadian history. For four years, the roguishly handsome criminal
mastermind hid in plain sight, eluding capture and the combined efforts
of the FBI, Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His future
appeared secure.
What Lemay didn't know was that less than two hundred miles away at Cape
Canaveral, a brilliant engineer named Harold Rosen was about to usher in
the age of global live television with the launch of the world's first
twenty-four-hour commercial communications satellite. Rosen's
extraordinary accomplishment would not only derail Lemay's cushy life
but change the world forever.
Brimming with criminal panache and technological intrigue, and set
against a turbulent and iconic period that includes the moon landing and
the civil rights movement, Satellite Boy tells the largely forgotten,
high-stakes story of the two equally driven men who inadvertently
launched the modern era.