Crows Over a Wheatfield

Sharp, Paula

ISBN 10: 0786861177 / ISBN 13: 9780786861170

Published by Hyperion, New York, 1996

About this Item

8vo. 404 pgs. Fine Hardcover in Near Fine jacket, SIGNED by author on title page. Book is clean, crisp, unmarked. Jacket has faint shallow wear to paper at spine ends, not rubbed or chipped. A thirty year segment in the life of a female judge, flavored by the pervasive effects of domestic violence in both her courtroom and her personal life. ISBN 0786861177. #1281. Size: 8vo - 7¾" - 9¾" Tall.

Seller Inventory # 1281

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Crows Over a Wheatfield
• Publisher: Hyperion, New York
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786861177
• ISBN 13: 9780786861170
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author
• Seller catalogs:
  • Complete Catalog
  • Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Classics
  • First Editions, Collectible

About this title

Synopsis

In her major new novel Paula Sharp creates an unforgettable portrait of two families that are shattered by domestic violence, and of the women who ultimately overcome its legacy.

Spanning a course of thirty years, Crows over a Wheatfield is the story of Melanie Ratleer, a judge who is approaching the summit of her career with an anguished awareness that she has long since abandoned herself to the comforting impersonality of her work. Melanie has come to the law under the massive shadow of her father, a brilliant and notorious litigator as despotic at home as he is in the courtroom. His young wife, daughter, and especially his son have suffered under his unpredictable and merciless rages, which culminate in a tragedy that tears the family apart and sends its members away in flight to their own safe havens.

Years afterward Melanie pays a visit to the small Wisconsin town where her stepmother and brother have settled and grown close to a colorfully unorthodox minister and his daughter, the flamboyant and provocative Mildred Steck. The young women quickly become friends, but as the summer passes, Melanie gradually learns that Mildred's family life is beset by its own brutality, which only another tragedy can bring to an end. After a decade in hiding Mildred becomes the focus of national attention when she organizes an underground movement on behalf of women and children fleeing unjust custody rulings and domestic violence. When the movement finally decides to take a public position on a notorious custody case, the drama that ensues forces Melanie to confront a test of her principles, as well as the many long-avoided ghosts of her past.

Written with extraordinary emotional power, Crows over a Wheatfield is a wholly successful fusion of the personal and the political--a suspenseful and controversial novel of rare beauty and insight.

About the Author

Paula Sharp is the author of The Woman Who Was Not All There, The Imposter, and Lost in Jersey City, and a translator of Latin American fiction, including Antonio Skįrmeta's novel The Insurrection. Her books have won her the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voice Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Award. A graduate of Columbia Law School, she practices criminal law in New York.