The Eastern Shore

Title:

The Eastern Shore

Author:

Just, Ward S., author.

ISBN:

9780544836587

Personal Author:

Just, Ward S., author.

Publication Information:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Physical Description:

200 pages ; 24 cm

Abstract:

"From an American master comes another "beautifully languid, emotionally intense tale" (Entertainment Weekly), this time of a newspaper editor's fateful decision to expose a small-town fugitive. Ned Ayres, the son of a judge in an Indiana town in midcentury America, has never wanted anything but a newspaper career--in his father's appalled view, a "junk business," a way of avoiding responsibility. The defining moment comes early, when Ned is city editor of his hometown paper. One of his beat reporters fields a tip: William Grant, the town haberdasher, married to the bank president's daughter and father of two children, once served six years in Joliet. The story runs--Ned offers no resistance to his publisher's argument that the public has a right to know. The consequences, swift and shocking, haunt him throughout a long career, as he moves first to Chicago, where he engages in a spirited love affair that cannot, in the end, compete with the pull of the newsroom--"never lonely, especially when it was empty"--And the "subtle beauty" of the front page. Finally, as the editor of a major newspaper in post-Kennedy-era Washington, DC, Ned has reason to return to the question of privacy and its many violations--the gorgeously limned themes running through Ward Just's elegiac and masterly new novel"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Newspaper editors -- Fiction.

Life change events -- Fiction.

Document ID:

SD_ILS:2248588

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Library	Collection	Collection	Call Number	Status
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	FIC JUST WAR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Clovis Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	JUST WA Eastern	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Kingsburg Branch Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	JUST WA Eastern	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Madera County Library (Madera Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Fiction Shelves	JUST	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ridgecrest Branch Library (Kern Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction	FIC JUST WAR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Adult Fiction Area	JUST WA Eastern	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

From an American master comes another "beautifully languid, emotionally intense tale" ( Entertainment Weekly ), this time of a newspaper editor's fateful decision to expose a small-town fugitive.

Ned Ayres, the son of a judge in an Indiana town in midcentury America, has never wanted anything but a newspaper career--in his father's appalled view, a "junk business," a way of avoiding responsibility. The defining moment comes early, when Ned is city editor of his hometown paper. One of his beat reporters fields a tip: William Grant, the town haberdasher, married to the bank president's daughter and father of two children, once served six years in Joliet. The story runs--Ned offers no resistance to his publisher's argument that the public has a right to know. The consequences, swift and shocking, haunt him throughout a long career, as he moves first to Chicago, where he engages in a spirited love affair that cannot, in the end, compete with the pull of the newsroom--"never lonely, especially when it was empty"--and the "subtle beauty" of the front page. Finally, as the editor of a major newspaper in post-Kennedy-era Washington, DC, Ned has reason to return to the question of privacy and its many violations--the gorgeously limned themes running through Ward Just's elegiac and masterly new novel.

Author Notes

Ward Just (born 1935 in Waukegan, Illinois) is an American writer. He is the author of 19 novels and numerous short stories.

Ward Just briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.

His novel, An Unfinished Season, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story About Boston, and again in 1986 for his short story The Costa Brava, 1959. His most recent novels include Exiles in the Garden (2009), Rodin;s Debutante(2011), American Romantic(2014), and The Eastern Shore(2016)..

In his later years he suffered from Lewy body syndrome and died on December 19, 2019. (Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this clever novel, Just (American Romance) explores the journalistic ethics of Ned Ayres through his six-decade career as a successful newspaper editor. As editor of his small hometown Indiana newspaper, Ned is challenged early in his career with a blockbuster story-William Grant, a popular, prosperous local businessman who is really a violent ex-convict with a phony new name. Ned must decide whether to publish a human interest story or a juicy, ruinous scandal. His decision results in tragedy, but Ned justifies it as news no matter the consequences. Untroubled by that fateful decision, Ned moves up to editor jobs in Chicago and Washington, D.C., into the Kennedy and L.B.J. years where journalistic ethics get more blurred. He changes jobs and lovers, consumed by the newspaper business. As years pass, Ned loves his work, never marries, and has no close friends. And he never again faces the dire consequences of that ex-con's exposure story so many years before. When Ned finally retires in 2005, he realizes his decrepit old Maryland manor house is just like the newspaper business-old, decayed, poorly maintained, and corrupted by rot. The William Grant sequence is the high point of the novel but occurs early on, and unfortunately the subsequent portions fail to match its power. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Just (American Romantic, 2014) draws deeply on his artistic wellsprings small-town midwestern life, newspapers, and politics in his evocative nineteenth novel. (Why keep count? Because Just's astute and powerful fiction will be a lasting pillar in American literature.) A sweet and receptive Indiana boy in the aftermath of WWI, Ned Ayres ends up enraging his father, an acerbic judge, by refusing to go to college and heading to Chicago, instead, to become a newspaperman. Affirming his life calling when he's promoted to editor, Ned revels in what it takes and what it means to put a newspaper together day after day, asserting that editing was soul work, a deeply mysterious business. But his all-consuming dedication overrides love, bringing grief and solitude, and raises daunting ethical quandaries, dramatized with particular intensity in an engrossing episode about his hometown haberdasher. Ned's renown carries him to Washington, D.C., in the early 1960s, where he reigns for three decades as an editor in chief, only to find himself battling the digital onslaught. At last retired and ensconced in an old, haunted manor house on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Ned begins writing a memoir with the hope of revealing the invisible glory of his focused life. Just's atmospheric and provocative novel is a paean to both the journalist's essential pursuit of facts and the storyteller's imaginative quest for truth.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE in "The Eastern Shore," his 19th novel, Ward Just offers the reader the gift of a fable. Its teller is Ralph Ayres, a World War I veteran now domiciled in an old folks' home, although he isn't old. The listener is his nephew, Ned Ayres. a boy transfixed by an uncle whose stories help the two escape the confines of their routines. Uncle Ralph recounts a surreal encounter between American infantrymen and "the Hun" in the French countryside. The Germans "came from the forest into twilight. Wolves were among them, mangy creatures, undisciplined, furtive in the shadows. And then the wolves vanished and the German infantry was in our midst. ... They were weary. And they carried gifts, candy bars and chocolate bears, bunches of flowers. They looked half starved but they couldn't've been friendlier." Talking, laughing, the German soldiers stay for an hour or more, and then, slowly, "they disappeared into the rain, one by one." It's an evocative, powerful fantasy, the work of a mind that is either optimistic or damaged, or both. But Ned's father, a literal-minded judge who disapproves of fictional creations, reminds his son that Uncle Ralph's stories are only that - after all, they "are not factual." Still, Ned insists on returning. Those stories mean something to him. And here, at once, are the two totems of this book, the wonder of the literary imagination and the authority of fact. It's possible that all of writing lies between them, and Ned, you might say, splits the difference. He will become a newspaperman, specifically an editor, whose job it is to assess a compilation of facts and manipulate them into something aspiring to truth. It sounds portentous to say so - and Just, with his predilection for understatement, never would - but questions of storytelling and truth are at the center of "The Eastern Shore." What makes a story true? What means of storytelling best capture reality? Are facts a path to truth or a finely constructed gate? Just, who has been a newspaperman and a memoirist, as well as a novelist, may be as qualified to consider these questions as any American writer. He does so through the person of Ned, whose career begins at his local paper. Impatient, ambitious, claustrophobic in his snug Indiana town, Ned will face a moment of truth when he must weigh in on the publication (or not) of a hot story: A prominent and upstanding local citizen is found to have a secret and violent past. The facts prove it. Should the story run? The newspaper publisher says yes: This is the inspirational story of a man who has triumphed over adversity. Ned wants more time to think it over, but he worries about looking weak. So he forces his conclusion. The story, he decides, "was the truth and fortified by fact." It runs - and the consequences are predictably tragic. Not for Ned, however. Elevated by the episode, he moves to Chicago, then 1960s Washington, to take increasingly important newspaper jobs. Ayres lives for journalism. To him, the front page is a work of art, made anew every evening. Campaign coverage "could resemble a symphony, violins carrying the melody, a warning from the horns, provocation from the big bass drum." (Modern readers might be excused for finding this a charming notion.) The other elements of a life - love, family, a partner, even loss - leave little impression on either character or reader. Instead, "Ned sipped whiskey, lit a cigarette and stepped into the newsroom." Just tells this story with a dispassionate remove and an economy of dialogue that make one wonder what might have happened if he'd directed his writing to the stage. Consider this exchange between Ned and Elaine, an early lover. As the couple walk along Lake Michigan, Ned commits an act of infidelity - he inadvertently reveals his preference for the newsroom, and his frustrated companion forces his hand. "'Will you stop looking at the time. Just stop it.' "'I'm late.' "'Catch a cab.' "'I'll see you at home,' he said. "'Or not,' she said. "'Or not,' he agreed." If people don't quite talk like this in real life, they should. These six terse sentences detail the end of a relationship with wonderful efficiency. They're filled with facts and emotions unsaid because they're already known. The truth lies behind the dialogue. There are plenty of such painfully incisive exchanges in "The Eastern Shore," along with the genuine pleasure of Just's sure hand as he guides us through Ned's career. But the novel is scented with an air of nostalgia that, while truthful, is less than compelling. As editor in chief of a newspaper obviously modeled on The Washington Post. Ned is hounded by the internet, nibbled at by budget cuts, undermined by the flight to the suburbs and the hopscotch attention spans of a new generation. He retires to a house on the Eastern Shore, a pre-Civil War manor in which Edgar Allan Poe had "rusticated for a spell." The house is now crumbling - falling, you might say. Ned commences to write his memoirs, but he is blocked; the book will never happen. He has come to wonder about the point of it all and debates whether to "wipe the computer clean," to erase all his memories. "Ned Ayres liked to think he had been part of a golden age that was never to repeat itself in any recognizable form." But in these pages, it does. As editor of a newspaper, Ned is hounded by the internet, nibbled at by budget cuts. RICHARD BRADLEY is editor in chief and chief content officer of Worth.

Kirkus Review

At the center of this even-tempered novel is a newspaperman far more wedded to his professional than to his personal life.Ned Ayres is raised in Herman, Indiana, and grows up feeling constricted by the limitations of small-town lifehe does not want to live and die in Herman. Much to the disgust of his father, a circuit court judge, Ned refuses to go to college and instead joins the local paper. This begins a process of widening opportunities as he works his way up in the profession, editing newsworthy stories and moving from Herman to Indianapolis to Chicago and finally to Washington, D.C. Along the way he has a failed love affair with Elaine Ardmore, who doesnt share his love ofor obsession withthe news. We also learn of his first big news break, when he was city editor at the Herman newspaper. The article concerned a scandal involving a man who had viciously beaten a gas station attendant, been sentenced to prison, and disappeared after parole. He becomes a haberdasher and prominent citizen in Herman before reporter Gus Harding writes a story revealing his sordid past, and Ned argues for printing itwith tragic consequences for the businessman. Justs (American Romantic, 2014, etc.) technique is to highlight several major events of Neds life, both personal and professional, and to chronicle his interactions with quirky publishers and prominent politicians. By the end, Ned is 80, living a lonely existence in his Eastern Shore manor house and writing his memoirsstrange in a way because his life as an editor has been inherently uneventful and undramatic. We even learn that hes never been abroad (much less ever married) because the newspaper business has so dominated his life. Just's narrative stays largely above the rough-and-tumble of newspaper practices, which leads to a curious detachment from their toughness and grit. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Ned Ayers, the protagonist of this reflective and intelligent new novel by Just (American Romantic), has devoted his life to the newspaper business with integrity and passion. From humble beginnings in Indiana, Ayers rises to become an accomplished editor and nationally recognized journalist. Good company for readers, Ayers is a compelling character-decent, literate, and introspective-and in some ways, he's very lucky. He's worked his entire life at a job he loves. Yet his all-consuming passion for the news has hurt him deeply, especially with regard to forsaken personal relationships, which he comes to grieve deeply. In addition, an exposé he approved early in his career resulted in tragedy and continues to haunt him. This leads Ayers to grapple with difficult truths about privacy, human complexity, and the nature of the media. Himself a respected journalist, Just skillfully examines a number of existential questions, including how we come to understand the choices we make and how well we actually know ourselves. VERDICT A pensive, quietly affecting novel. Recommended for literary fiction fans.-Patrick -Sullivan, -Manchester -Community Coll., CT © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

One UNCLE RALPH Uncle Ralph lived in the nursing home on the southern side of town, a solitary building on a low hill, low-slung, horizontal. It was built in 1912, the architect a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, the cost raised by subscription and a modest rise in property taxes. Everyone agreed it was a fine facility. The staff consisted of one doctor and three capable nurses, more than adequate to care for the twenty-two residents, ten men and twelve women, all but one in their seventies and eighties. Uncle Ralph was fifty-two. He occupied a small room on the second floor with a distant view of the Daggett River and the nine-hole golf course beyond. Everett Nursing Home was run loosely. Family and friends could visit anytime they wanted between ten a.m. and eight p.m. Two of the men and four women were senile and did not leave their rooms. Uncle Ralph was known as the Sergeant because he was a veteran of the Great War, a survivor of the Western Front. His memory was phenomenal, story after story tumbling from it in a husky baritone. Everyone knew that among his many wounds was a slice of shrapnel to the throat. Uncle Ralph was fond of standing at the window of his room and remarking that the golf course's sand traps reminded him of the craters left by artillery bombardments in the war, except the craters were much deeper, eight, ten feet in places, whereas the sand traps were shallow. Also, there were fewer sand traps than craters. Still, when he looked at the sand traps he thought of bomb craters. The foursomes on the golf course reminded him of infantry. Nine irons became Mausers, and billed caps the heavy iron helmets of the German army. Uncle Ralph's Saturday-afternoon audience was his nephew Ned Ayres, little Neddy, a bright and inquisitive boy who never seemed to tire of his uncle's war stories. Listen carefully, Uncle Ralph would say in his husky voice. This was July 1918. We were closing on Ludendorff's forty divisions. We moved out at dawn from Meaux and marched east to Trilport. From Trilport to Changis and Favant and Nogen and Charly and, at last, Château Thierry. They were just little French villages, some of them deserted or mostly deserted. The weather was warm and our boots kicked up a storm of dust from the roads, French dust. We don't have dust like that here in Indiana. The dust was frightful. Choking dust. You could suffocate from it and when the dust got bad enough you put on your gas mask. You were unable to get away from it, damned dust. In your hair and eyes and your boots and your -- and here Uncle Ralph glanced at Neddy, pausing fractionally -- crotch. It was in your ears and under your fingernails. It blotted out the sky, you see, and that was a good thing because the Hun air force was about, deadly bastards. God, they were vicious. Later that day we had a soft rain that put down the dust even though it remained in your pockets and eyelids. Never seen anything like it here in Indiana. I don't know how they managed to live there day by day, the French peasant class. Filthy stuff, dust. Ugh, Neddy said, glancing furtively at his uncle, whose voice had risen as if he were on a parade ground. Uncle Ralph was shaped like a barrel, short of stature, entirely bald with scars here and there on his head and arms. He wore thick-lensed wire spectacles and heavy workman's shoes. His hands were dainty, unlike the rest of him. His light blue eyes were mere slits behind the spectacles and his eyelids. Now he coughed twice, a kind of lumbar whistle. Château Thierry was the objective. The front line. Beyond it was Ludendorff in person. The crown prince -- Kronprinz -- was there somewhere too. Forty divisions spread over a hundred miles, a killing ground all right. Uncle Ralph paused there, collecting himself, his eyes half shut as if he were struggling for something, a name or a face, some fugitive emotion or buried memory. And then he smiled. Rubbed his hands together and leaned close to Neddy. He said, This is confidential. Between us. I'm going to tell you a secret, the way things were back then. We saw the Hun from a distance. They came from the forest into twilight. Wolves were among them, mangy creatures, undisciplined, furtive in the shadows. And then the wolves vanished and the German infantry was in our midst. They were big men, most of them bearded. They had had a bad time of it, you could see that. They were weary. And they carried gifts, candy bars and chocolate bears, bunches of flowers. They looked half starved but they couldn't've been friendlier. Some of them spoke English. Only a few were armed, their Mausers slung over their shoulders, barrels down. Up close they were not fearsome. They were playful as children, these German boys, asking questions and not always waiting for answers. Why, they stayed with us an hour or more. Of course we had come to a halt. The light rain continued to fall as the sky darkened. We were still miles from Château Thierry but no one seemed to mind. They began slowly to drift away, our German enemy. They disappeared into the rain one by one. The colonel commanding removed his shako and gave us a friendly wave. Auf Wiedersehen. He was a fine-looking officer, at ease on his horse. Darkness continued to fall until at last there was only us Americans. Our expeditionary force. We were alone. The ground around us was littered with candy wrappers and flower petals. You know, Neddy, there's goodness in everyone. The goodness must be sought out and accepted when you find it. Often it's buried deep, depending on the situation, the time of day and so forth. The challenge. So, we set off with light hearts. Our morale was good. We marched on and didn't reach Château Thierry until well after midnight. Gosh, we were bushed. We'd had it by then, don't you see. At dawn the guns began to fire and we marched off in the direction of the guns. Uncle Ralph stopped there and lit a cigarette, his fingers trembling. At a sudden noise behind him, Neddy turned. His father was in the doorway. Hi Neddy, hi Ralph. Eric, Ralph said. I've heard the most wonderful story, Neddy said. You're lucky, his father said. Your Uncle Ralph has a million of them. I'm tired, Ralph said. No wonder, Eric said. What do you mean by that? It's tiring, telling stories, don't you think? I suppose, Ralph said. Eric Ayres looked at his watch. Is there anything you need? I want to take a nap, Ralph said. Well, Eric said. Next Saturday, then. Neddy was on his feet, his hand on his uncle's shoulder. Ralph did not respond, his eyes half shut once again. Neddy knew he was in another place, not here, somewhere private. He knew from past experience that his uncle would not speak again. He looked up at his father, so lean and tall. It was hard to believe he was Ralph's brother. Hard to believe they were members of the same family, born only five years apart but Ralph looked years older. Ralph, seated, was bunched up like a fist, his only movement the hand that held his cigarette, back and forth from his mouth to the ashtray on the floor. Neddy was reminded of a musician's metronome. No one spoke in the gathering silence, something unresolved. Neddy understood that it was up to him to put things right. Bye, Uncle Ralph. Thanks for the story. So long, Ralph, his father said. Ralph Ayres nodded. Neddy thought he saw a smile or the beginnings of a smile, anyhow something forgiving. Uncle Ralph was a fine man. He had been everywhere, in the war and later on. He was experienced. He had seen the German army up close, and other things in Europe and America. He had even been to the West Coast, lived there for a time until his ill health intervened and he returned home to Indiana and the Everett, where he was so well liked because of his kindly disposition. Excerpted from The Eastern Shore by Ward Just All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.