It is 1962, and the city of Seattle is about to be famous. Roger Morgan, an audacious young promoter, wants to pull off the ultimate coup de théâtre: the World’s Fair, rising out of the downtown fog to show the whole nation that the future has arrived. In the run-up to the Fair’s grand opening, Roger is everywhere at once – entertaining Elvis Presley and Lyndon Johnson, dipping in and out of secret card games and smooth-talking his way out of awkward financial questions – all under the haze of many a whiskey and the shadow of a looming crisis in Cuba.
Roger dazzles everyone he meets, and is still a backstage power forty years later when, at the age of seventy, he makes a surprise bid for mayor. Helen Gulanos, a journalist new in town and keen to make her mark, sees her retrospectives on the 1962 Fair become front-page news as Roger’s candidacy ignites the public imagination. She resolves to uncover the real Roger from behind the warm handshakes and glossy receptions – because even Seattle’s golden boy must have something to hide.
Woven into in this city of dreams is a cat-and-mouse-tale of back-room deals, idealism and pragmatism, the best and worst ambitions, and the aspirations that shape our communities and our lives. Hard-nosed yet profoundly humane, Truth Like the Sun is the most ambitious novel yet from the beloved author of The Highest Tide.
