Crows Over A Wheatfield

This extraordinary bestseller, set in small-town Wisconsin and spanning thirty years, is the story of Judge Melanie Klonecki, the daughter of an abusive and brilliant criminal defense lawyer. Returning to the rural landscape of her youth, Melanie befriends the flamboyant Mildred Steck, a woman who leads an insurrectionist movement and creates an underground railroad for mothers and children whom the courts and child custody laws have failed to protect from domestic violence. Crows Over a Wheatfield is a triumphant fusion of the personal and political -- a controversial, suspenseful story written with rare beauty and insight.

Paula Sharp is the author of Lost in Jersey City, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1993; The Woman Who Was Not All There, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voice Award; and the critically acclaimed short story collection, The Imposter, which received the Wisconsin Library Association Bantam Award. She is a translator of Latin American contemporary fiction, including Antonio Skármeta's novel, The Insurrection. Her short stories have been anthologized in New Stories from the South: the Year's Best, and she has received the New Jersey State Council Distinguished Artist Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. A graduate of Columbia University Law School, she practices in New York.