Sounding The Waters

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A novel of U.S. politics, clean and dirty, and the ways in which the specter of the past informs our every move.

Ben Shamas, a gifted lawyer whose daughter's death in a boating accident has led him toward self-destruction, is tapped by a friend and old Yale classmate to help with his Midwest campaign for the U.S. Senate. Bobby Parrish is a principled and serious candidate who doesn't expect Ben to co-opt his opponent's dirty playbook.

James Glickman's impressive debut novel burst onto the scene to much acclaim in the mid-nineties. Now for the first time in paperback, it is available to a new audience and more pressing than ever.

Reviews

"...a political novel that restores one's sense of the human depth, the psychological pressures, and the moral questions that go with the territory. A richly rewarding novel with complex, believable characters who develop in the course of engaging in vividly and intelligently rendered experiences."
Christian Science Monitor

"...arresting. On the brink of a new political season, it's nice to read a novel in which what happens in a campaign is less important than what happens to the people engaged in it."
The New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Sounding the Waters is taut and involving, written so cleanly it squeaks....Glickman is best at showing how the 1960's slogan 'The personal is political' has been stood on its head. Today the political devours the personal.

The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review

"Suspenseful...masterly...marvelous. This beautifully engaging work, with its deft turns of phrase, resonates with a well-told tale. It has tough dialogue when necessary, pastoral description when warranted, urban sophistication when needed. Sounding the Waters creates a rip tide of excitement."
The Providence Journal

"This is the novel Primary Colors promised to be, but Glickman takes the high road, turning his back on cheap gossip and making fictional politicians seem quite real. Dramatizing the complicated process of running for office and contrasting it against the starkness of human motives and desires, he's produced a cliffhanger of a novel, right down to the final speeches of the final debate of the closing days of the campaign."
Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio

"It's hard to believe that this is Glickman's first novel; the prose is smooth and self-assured, with a consistently convincing narrative voice."
Booklist

"Glickman's first effort succeeds as a skillfully crafted tale about the ruthlessness and ingenuity of American politics."
Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

James Glickman is a graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His fiction and nonfiction writings appeared in The Boston Globe, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Berfrois, and many others. His first novel Sounding The Waters came out in 1996 to wide acclaim. Crossing Point is his second novel. He lives in Massachusetts.