CHICAGO — Taking a luncheon break from what has been a life of considerable movement and accomplishments, Frank Sennett plunked himself into a booth at Club Lago, that pleasantly old-fashioned bar and restaurant in River North, and started talking about his three kids, his wife, his father and how he once wanted to be a stand-up comedian.
“It was either that or journalism,” he said.
He chose wisely. Sennett has successfully surfed the choppy waters of the contemporary journalism and media seas as well as anyone. He has held and enjoyed some very prominent positions. He has been a writer and editor at the venerable Newcity, to which he still contributes. He was president and editor-in-chief of Time Out Chicago. He has taught college classes. He was the interim chief operating officer of Ebert Digital and RogerEbert.com. He was the director of custom publishing and digital strategy for Crain’s Chicago Business and later became the director of digital products and strategy for all four city and regional publications under Crain Communications. He was with Crain’s for nearly a decade until leaving last year to become vice president of Outlook Marketing.
This is a very solid career for the now 55-year-old, who was born and raised in, and is ever-influenced by, Montana. The editor of his high school newspaper in Missoula, he arrived sight unseen at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, drawn to this area by, he says, “In no particular order, the Cubs, journalism and The Second City.”
He indulged in those attractions — going to Wrigley Field with frequency; taking classes at and performing with The Second City; editing the Northwestern’s humor magazine, Rubber Teeth; and hosting radio shows on the campus station, WNUR-FM — but after graduation was drawn back home, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Montana, writing two novels as his thesis. They were published too, “Nash, Rambler” and “Nash, Metropolitan.” But he says he has not read them since he wrote them. “Those were the work of the 22-year-old me,” he says. “I can’t even imagine what they might have in common with me now.”
He has written other books since, most notably 2012′s “Groupon’s Biggest Deal Ever,” the story of the high-profile Chicago-based e-commerce company, which grew from a cover story he wrote for Time Out Chicago. Of it, the Tribune wrote, “Sennett has provided us with a well-written and revealing first draft of the company’s start.”
He has had a lively life and is a compelling conversationalist, our luncheon chat filled with stories of his time as a political columnist in Spokane, Washington; why he was named, dubiously, “the second funniest person in Montana;” being asked to procure marijuana for writer Hunter S. Thompson; his friendship with radio’s Steve Dahl … and other tales.
But the main topic was his recently released novel, a sophisticated political thriller titled “Shadow State.”
He wrote most of the book at the dining room table in the house he shares with his wife, Denise Schneider, the director of communications at the Goodman Theatre, his two children (18-year-old Nick and 11-year-old Emma) with whom he shares custody with his first wife of 16 years, and his 3-year-old son with Denise, Frank Robert Schneider Sennett.
The boy is named after Sennett’s father, who died while this novel was coming to life and to whom the book is dedicated: “And for my Pop. Sorry I didn’t finish this in time for you to read it. Oh shucks, oh darn.”
He speaks fondly of his late father, recalling how they watched movies together, “All the time, classic Westerns, action movies. He was a cool cat.”
Sennett makes his childhood in Montana sound idyllic. His father was, he says with palpable affection, “a hippie who became a political idealist.”
And now, with the publication of “Shadow State,” Sennett is into a new chapter. This is, he plans, the first of a series, writing at the book’s end, “Rafe Hendrix will return.”
Good, because Hendrix is the captivating if damaged hero of the book, a former U.S. Army Ranger, heading the Secret Service detail responsible for protecting Wyetta Johnson, the first Black female gay U.S. president. A violent encounter leaves her alive but Hendrix’s daughter dead. Adrift and heartbroken, he moves to Texas where, for a time and thanks to a new romance, all seems well until a diabolical killer, with a twisted sense of political history, emerges.
I don’t want to spoil Sennett’s clever plot. Booklist noted “The writing is rich and nuanced, and the characters are lovingly crafted. No stereotypes here; no standard-issue good guys and bad guys. No familiar plot points, either: Sennett will appear to take the story down a familiar road, but then he’ll make an unexpected turn.”
Sennett was in the middle of the novel when the unrest of Jan. 6, 2021, arrived.
“That was a jarring day for me,” he says. “And the events of the day and its implications began to infiltrate the novel, the implications of the day and the effects on law enforcement.”
This gives the novel a timely impact and thought-provoking substance.
The day after our Club Lago conversation, Sennett wrote me a note, part of which said, “One thing I forgot to mention in terms of my goals for the novel is that I wanted to really show the effects of trauma and grief on these people, protagonists and antagonists alike. Real, heavy effects, not, ‘Hey I felt bad and then shook it off and went back to my regularly scheduled mayhem.’ These are people who get thrown into wars and make high-stakes choices, some of which turn out very badly, and none of that is something you can easily shrug off. Particularly because of what my dad was going through while I was writing, grief was top of mind for me.”
