The Eastern Shore

In this clever novel, Just (American Romance) explores the journalistic ethics of Ned Ayres through his six-decade career as a successful newspaper editor. As editor of his small hometown Indiana newspaper, Ned is challenged early in his career with a blockbuster story—William Grant, a popular, prosperous local businessman who is really a violent ex-convict with a phony new name. Ned must decide whether to publish a human interest story or a juicy, ruinous scandal. His decision results in tragedy, but Ned justifies it as news no matter the consequences. Untroubled by that fateful decision, Ned moves up to editor jobs in Chicago and Washington, D.C., into the Kennedy and L.B.J. years where journalistic ethics get more blurred. He changes jobs and lovers, consumed by the newspaper business. As years pass, Ned loves his work, never marries, and has no close friends. And he never again faces the dire consequences of that ex-con’s exposure story so many years before. When Ned finally retires in 2005, he realizes his decrepit old Maryland manor house is just like the newspaper business—old, decayed, poorly maintained, and corrupted by rot. The William Grant sequence is the high point of the novel but occurs early on, and unfortunately the subsequent portions fail to match its power. (Oct.)