Truth Like the Sun

Zusatztext 77569675 Informationen zum Autor JIM LYNCH has received the H. L. Mencken Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists, among other national honors. His most recent novel, Border Songs, won the Washington State Book Award and is currently being adapted for television. Klappentext A classic and hugely entertaining political novel, the cat-and-mouse story of urban intrigue in Seattle both in 1962, when Seattle hosted the World's Fair, and in 2001, after its transformation in the Microsoft gold rush. Larger than life, Roger Morgan was the mastermind behind the fair that made the city famous and is still a backstage power forty years later, when at the age of seventy he runs for mayor in hopes of restoring all of Seattle's former glory. Helen Gulanos, a reporter every bit as eager to make her mark, sees her assignment to investigate the events of 1962 become front-page news with Morgan's candidacy, and resolves to find out who he really is and where his power comes from: in 1962, a brash and excitable young promoter, greeting everyone from Elvis Presley to Lyndon Johnson, smooth-talking himself out of difficult situations, dipping in and out of secret card games; now, a beloved public figure with, it turns out, still-plentiful secrets. Wonderfully interwoven into this tale of the city of dreams are backroom deals, idealism and pragmatism, the best and worst ambitions, and all the aspirations that shape our communities and our lives. Excerpted from Chapter One Chapter One April 21, 1962 THIS IS WHEN and where it begins, with all the dreamers champagne-drunk and stumbling on the head of the Needle. Look back further all you want, but this renaissance starts right here when the dreamers get everyone to take one long gawk at this place. Look! Just, just look at this brash metropolis surrounded by postcard summits and all that boat-loving water. Up here in the dark, five hundred feet above it all, downtown looks like it’s on fire again, though it’s just showing off this time, flaunting cheap hydropower, everyone flipping on their lights to greet the world, all those bulbs straining to make the city look bigger than it actually is. Taste that salty air. Smell the clam spit. Where better to start afresh? A whole new way of living in a city of things to come. That’s right. A city so short on history it’s mostly all future anyway. So climb on board and go, go, go! The elevator doors glide open seven minutes before midnight, everyone spilling out, men dressed like penguins, women like peacocks, an older crowd, bloodshot and slack-jawed, up past bedtime, bumping into radiant waitresses in gold lamé passing out flutes of champagne. Roger Morgan, the grand exalted dreamer himself, grabs a glass, thanks the waitress, takes in the chaos. Dozens of people— and it sounds like hundreds—are already here, seeing their city for the first time from this height, shouting, crowding the windows, exclaiming Good God! at the spectacle of lights and water below while others marvel at how the dining area spins around the elevators and kitchen just slowly enough to make you think you’re losing your marbles. A busty woman returns from the bathroom and can’t find her friends, who’ve rotated eighty feet clockwise, until she hears them roaring at her confusion. A drink spills, a glass breaks, a man retches and blames it on the spinning. More shouts. More stampeding laughter. Roger parts a gaggle, turning more heads—so damn young, isn’t he?—into another flurry of handshakes and hugs from people who’ve already embraced him tonight, but they want more contact now that they’re loaded and up in his Space Needle. Everybody wants his blessings, whether it’s the etiquette committee urging local ladies to wear dresses during the fair or the beautification committee telling school kids to keep those candy wrappers in their pockets. The fair’s ...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Jim Lynch
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 22.01.2013
• EAN: 9780307949349
• ISBN: 978-0-307-94934-9
• Pagine: 272
• Dimensioni: 134 mm x 202 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi