Truth Like the Sun (Vintage Contemporaries)

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2012: Told through dual timelines--the 1962 World’s Fair and a 2001 mayoral election--this is the story of a man and his city thinking big, striving for greatness … and making mistakes. Civic cheerleader Roger Morgan had been the driving force behind the construction of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle. Thirty-nine years later, Morgan, now 70, decides on a whim to run for mayor, which brings him face to face with a curious and tenacious reporter--and his own murky past. Author Jim Lynch is a former newspaper reporter who deftly captures the complicated relationship between an ambitious journalist and an ambitious public official, each of them flawed and haunted by the ghosts of past mistakes. --Neal Thompson