Awards

• Commended for Independent Publisher Book Awards (West-Pacific Fiction) 2006

Overview

It is January 1948. Nine-year-old Philip Wade and his family have been uprooted and moved to the small Eastern Oregon town of Baker City, where Philip's father, Kenneth Wade, will begin his career as a mortician. In the spring, the father hires a local recluse, Jack O'Brien, to help put a new roof on their house. Three weeks later, when a school teacher is found beaten to death, Jack O'Brien is accused of her murder. Kenneth Wade emerges as the only person who defends O'Brien--fully believing the man to be innocent. Philip is a spellbound spectator and narrator of his father's consuming struggle to save a man he barely knows. Conversely, he witnesses his mother's determination to keep the specter of violence from distorting the lives of her sons. Twisted into the father's fixation to wrest Jack O'Brien from custody is the relentless memory of a boyhood friend who, wrongly accused of a killing, hanged himself in his jail cell. This long-ago horror drives Kenneth Wade; he is caught up in the terrible present because of a past that will not let him go. Baker City 1948 is the story of a man's struggle for truth as told to us by the boy who was watching him.

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9780963265524

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Reviews

...is enthralling. When a local schoolteacher is murdered, family values and ethical choices clash in this small Eastern Oregon town. The Wade family, having only recently moved to Baker City, unwillingly becomes deeply involved in solving the murder. I highly recommend this book. Betty Kuhl, Betty's Books, Baker City, Oregon ...is a clear cut above much of the mystery genre with its fine period detail and its clean, fast-moving narrative. Like Harper Lee, Wright explore[s] much of what makes real tragedy in our lives: the violence of memory, the loss of innocent perspective, the fractured trust in intimate relationships and our human tendency to reduce what threatens us into simplistic and often erroneous interpretations. Barbara J. Scot, New York Times Notable Author of A Prairie Reunion and Stations at Still Creek ...is a fascinating trip through the psyche of a young boy as he struggles to understand a very adult world... Wright evokes simpler times in simpler places, yet this story is anything but simple. I found it enjoyable and...with the insights of a writer at home with his material. Loretta Stinson, Graduate Editor Portland State University Publishing Program ...brings back the simple days of an Eastern Oregon boyhood, along with things which are not so simple--murder, suspicion, and family loyalty. Highly readable. Nicole Mones, author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light

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