Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2012
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
"A briskly paced novel that gives us an insider's view into both the politics of culture and the culture of politics." - Kirkus Reviews
"Executed at a heady clip, the book gets some special traction from posing capitalism under the menacing shadow of Khrushchev against pre-9/11 apathy. But characters like Morgan and Gulanos are ultimately no more than values..." - Publishers Weekly
"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
"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
"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
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Denise Lynch
The author of four novels set in Western Washington including Before the Wind, (April 2016). Lynch's first novel, The Highest Tide (2005), won the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award, was performed on stage in Seattle and became an international bestseller after it was featured on England's Richard and Judy television show. His second novel, Border Songs (2009), was also adapted to the stage and won the Washington State Book Award as well as the Indie's Choice Honor Book Award. His novel, Truth Like the Sun, was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Prize, given to the best literary crime fiction in North America.
Lynch grew up in the Seattle area and graduated from the University of Washington before bouncing around the country as a reporter for newspapers in Alaska, Virginia and for ...
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