Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Truth Like the Sun, read after Jim Lynch's celebrated Highest Tide, confirms the tidal wave of his talent. Set again in the Pacific Northwest he has explored in such depth and variety, this is a city story all the way. His detailing of the moment-to-moment stratagems of a reporter stalking a political big-foot, and of the big-foot's bravura evasions the hunt proceeding throughout the storied and exotic environment of any right-minded person's favorite city is thrilling." Geoffrey Wolff
Review
"The joinery between the two halves of the narrative [1962 and 2001] is seamless. His people live and breathe on the page. I was engrossed throughout." Jonathan Raban
Review
"Often funny and sometimes devastating but always to the point, Truth Like the Sun reflects back on the 1962 World's Fair that put Seattle on the map. With the keen eye of the journalist he was and the nimbleness of the novelist he has become, Jim Lynch provides a thought-provoking fictional portrait of a city on the make and its somewhat tarnished tribe of civic strivers." Ivan Doig
Review
"This book is one of a kind, and a great story. At a time when Seattle is celebrating the anniversary of the World's Fair, Lynch's novel is a bracing reminder of the larger context: an uncertain city hoping to make a mark in mid-century, and then figuring out where it is in a more globalized world forty years later. It's smart — and unique — to link these with one wonderfully rendered character, still trying to have a hand in how his city will go." Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company
About the Author
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.