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Thomas Railles, an American expatriate and former “odd-jobber” for the CIA, is a successful painter living with his beloved wife, Florette, in a small village in the Pyrenees. On an ordinary autumn day, Florette goes for a walk in the hills and is killed by unknown assailants. Was her death simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was it somehow connected to Thomas's work with the CIA? When French officials detain four Moroccan terrorists and charge them with Florette's murder, Thomas is invited by his boyhood friend (and former agency handler) Bernhard to witness the interrogation. Thomas's search for answers in this shadow world will lead him to a confrontation that will change him forever.

A young man comes of age in Eisenhower-era Chicago in this “stunning” Pulitzer Prize Finalist novel by the author of Echo House (USA Today).In An Unfinished Season, Ward Just evokes a city, an epoch, and a shift in ideals through the story of nineteen-year-old Wilson Ravan. In his summer before college, Wils finds himself straddling three worlds: the working-class newsroom where he's landed a coveted job as a rookie reporter, the whirl of glittering North Shore debutante parties where he spends his nights, and the growing cold war between his parents at home. With unparalleled grace and incisive observation, Just brings Wils's circle to radiant life. Through his finely wrought portraits of a father and son, young lovers, and newsroom dramas, Just also stirringly captures a seismic shift in American political life.WINNER OF THE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR FICTION“A master American novelist.” —Vanity Fair

Jonathan Yardley called A Family Trust'his longest, his most ambitious and his best a book with serious purposes that manages to entertain at the same timerich in carefully observed details, in quick, sharp perceptions that reveal more than one at first understands fine, satisfying, rewarding book, the work of a mature and accomplished novelist,'upon the book's initial publication in 1978. The passing of Amos Rising, town elder and editor of The Dement Intelligencer, leaves the Rising family without a patriarch and the town with a hole in its center. The ambitions and talents of the Risings, the changing face of the town and the life of the spirited, intelligent, and attractive Dana Rising fill the pages of this extraordinary novel. Ward Just's A Family Trust is about the public face and private souls of America's Heartland in the same way his other novels are about Germany, Vietnam, or Washington D.C. The time has come to bring A Family Trust back into print.