The Race

Overview

Corey Grace--a handsome and charismatic Republican senator from Ohio--is plunged by an act of terrorism into a fierce presidential primary battle with the favorite of the party establishment and a magnetic leader of the Christian right. A decorated Gulf War Air Force pilot known for speaking his mind, Grace's reputation for voting his own conscience rather than the party line--together with his growing romance with Lexie Hart, an African-American movie star--has earned him a reputation as a maverick and an iconoclast. But Grace is still haunted by a tragic mistake buried deep in his past, and now his integrity will be put to the test in this most brutal of political contests, in which nothing in his past or present life is off-limits.

Depicting contemporary power politics at its most ruthless, The Race takes on the most incendiary issues in American culture: racism, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, gay rights, and the rise of media monopolies with their own agenda and lust for power. As the pressure of the campaign intensifies, Grace encounters betrayal, excruciating moral choices, and secrets that can destroy lives. Ultimately, the race leads to a deadlocked party convention where Grace must resolve the conflict between his romance with Lexie and his presidential ambitions--and decide just who and what he is willing to sacrifice.

Editorial Reviews

Leaving courtroom thrills behind, Patterson crafts an absorbing and suspenseful account of a dirty run for the Republican presidential nomination. Sen. Corey Grace, a Republican from Ohio, became a public hero during the Gulf War after surviving the crash of his jet and enduring months of captivity and torture. Thirteen years later, he's 43 and one of a national magazine's 50 sexiest men alive. Corey has a real shot at winning his party's nomination-if, as his advisers constantly remind him, he can just rein in his impulsiveness, his party-line crossing votes and his habit of telling the truth. When Corey falls for sexy African-American actress Lexie Hart, who comes to Washington to lobby for stem cell research, Corey's advisers wring their hands. But they soon have more pressing matters to deal with: among the other candidates in the Republican field are evangelist Rev. Bob Christy and Sen. Rob Marotta of Pennsylvania-a man under the de facto control of Machiavellian campaign director Magnus Price, The Darth Vader of American politics. The perfidy and mendacity that follow mesmerize as much as they ring true. (Oct.)
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Richard North Patterson

Richard North Patterson graduated in 1968 from Ohio Wesleyan University and has been awarded their Distinguished Achievement Citation. He is a 1971 graduate of the Case Western Reserve University's School of Law, and a recipient of their President's Award for Distinguished Alumni. He has served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Ohio; a trial attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco; and was the SEC's liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor. More recently, Patterson was a partner in the San Francisco office of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, now Bingham-McCutchen. In 1993, he retired from the practice of law to devote himself to writing. He has served on the boards of his undergraduate and law schools, the National Partnership for Women and Families, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, PEN Center West, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and was chairman of Common Cause, the grassroots citizens' lobby founded by John Gardner. Patterson studied fiction writing with Jesse Hill Ford at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; his first short story was published in The Atlantic Monthly and his first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1979. Between 1981 and 1985, he published The Outside Man, Escape the Night, and Private Screening. His first novel in eight years, Degree of Guilt (1993), and his Eyes of a Child (1995) were combined into a miniseries by NBC TV. Both were international bestsellers, and Degree of Guilt was awarded the French Grand Prix de Litt�rature Polici�re in 1995. The Final Judgment (1995), Silent Witness (1997), No Safe Place (1998), and Dark Lady (1999) all became immediate international bestsellers. Protect and Defend (2000), about the controversial nomination of the first woman to be chief justice and her entanglement in an incendiary lawsuit regarding late-term abortion and parental consent, became Patterson's seventh consecutive international bestseller and received a Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for its treatment of issues regarding reproductive rights. Balance of Power confronted one of America's most divisive political and social issues--gun violence--and was chosen by USA Today as its book-of-the-month selection for November 2003. Conviction (2005) focused on the law and politics of capital punishment. Exile (2007) dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was nominated for South Africa's leading literary award. The Race (2007) concerned a dramatic campaign for president and was Patterson's eleventh consecutive New York Times bestseller. His next novel, Eclipse, deals with human rights, Africa, and the geopolitics of oil, and will be published in January 2009. Patterson has appeared on such shows as Today, Good Morning America, The CBS Morning Show, Inside Politics, Washington Journal, Buchanan and Press, Greta Van Susteren, and Hardball. His articles on politics, literature, and law have been published in the London Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. A frequent speaker on political, legal, and social issues, in 2004 Patterson spoke at Washington, D.C., rallies in support of reproductive rights and against gun violence. His papers are collected by Boston University. Patterson lives in San Francisco and on Martha's Vineyard with his wife, Dr. Nancy Clair.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Macmillan

Filesize

1.62 MB

Number of Pages

352

eBook ISBN

9781429922036