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Jul 21, 2012mpfickes rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Helen Gulanis comes to Seattle to work at the P.I.. Ambitious, singularly focused on winning the brass ring of journalism, a Pulitzer, she believes she's found her perfect subject when "Mr. Seattle," Roger Morgan, declares his candidacy for mayor. Former journalist Jim Lynch interweaves the threads of his fictional character's 2001 mayoral bid with his rise to fame in 1962. Barely 30, a wunderkind from nowhere, golden-tongued Morgan manages to sell the city's timid elite on holding a World's Fair and building an iconic monument to its vision of the future. The lyrical prose of Lynch's magical debut novel, The Highest Tide, is absent here. The awkward mechanics of juggling time and an unwieldy cast of characters weighs down a cardboard plot. Lynch fails to make these characters more than props to tell the Seattle history that clearly enthralls him.