Bleeding Kansas [Import] [Hardcover]

Sara Paretsky (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons; 1ST edition (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340839112
• ISBN-13: 978-0340839119
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,855,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sara Paretsky is the award-winning creator of the V I Warshawski detective novels. When Sara introduced V I in Indemnity Only in 1982, she revolutionized the mystery novel. By creating a female investigator who uses her wits as well a her fists, Sara challenged a genre in which women were traditionally either vamps or victims.

V I is the quintessential urban woman. She grew up in the shadow of the old steel mills on Chicago's Southeast side and knows her way around every alley in town. She's a street fighter, a singer, a bit of a clothes horse, and a woman of great intensity and passion.

So how much like V I is her creator? They certainly come from very different places. Sara grew up in rural Kansas where she attended a two-room school. She continues to believe the high point of her life came at the age of twelve when she was picked to play third base for the Kaw Valley District 95 baseball team.

Bleeding Kansas, Sara's 14th novel, is set in the part of the Kaw River Valley where Sara grew up.

Sara first came to Chicago in 1966 to do community service work in the same neighborhood where Martin Luther King was organizing. It was a time of fierce passions in the city and in the country as people fought over racial justice, the rights and wrongs of the war in Vietnam, and women's rights. Sara has always felt that that summer changed her life forever, and when she finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas, she came back to make Chicago her home. Some of the history of that summer is recounted in her essay collection, Writing in an Age of Silence.

Like V I, Sara likes to sing, in an amateur way, has a hopeless passion for the Cubs, loves Italian shoes'and is obsessed by the search for the perfect cappuccino, so much so that she even went to cappuccino school.

In other academic ventures, Sara received a PhD in American History and an MBA from the University of Chicago. In 1976, she married physics professor Courtenay Wright. The two live in the city of Chicago with their wonder dog Callie. Their lives are made brighter by their adored granddaughter, Maia.

Sara shares V I's passion for social justice. She founded Sisters in Crime in 1986 to support women readers and writers in the mystery world. To give back to the community, Paretsky established the Sara and Two C-Dogs Foundation, which primarily supports girls and women in the arts, letters, and sciences. She has endowed several scholarships at the University of Kansas, and has mentored students in Chicago's inner city schools. She serves on the advisory boards of Literature for All of Us, a literacy group for teen moms, and Thresholds, which serves Chicago's mentally-ill homeless.

Sara has received numerous awards, including the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers Association, the Gold Dagger for best novel for her book Blacklist, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from several different universities. Sara's books have been translated into almost thirty languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A noteworthy change of style, January 22, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bleeding Kansas (Hardcover)

While I have not been a reader of Sara Paretsky's mysteries featuring private investigator V.I. Warshawski, I have long been aware of one of Chicago's finest writers. It was with great interest, therefore, that I received my copy of BLEEDING KANSAS, which represents a major departure for Paretsky. Instead of the grim streets of Chicago, the setting is Lawrence, Kansas, a community of farmers and University of Kansas students and teachers. Rather than a bang-bang mystery, it is a thoughtful work focusing on issues that paint the contemporary political landscape. The book's title reminds us of the Kansas territory of 150 years ago and the battle between pro- and anti-slavery forces. The novel itself serves as a thoughtful reminder to readers that the philosophical battle of that era in American history continues today.

Paretsky's father was a faculty member at the University of Kansas. Her family moved to Lawrence when she was four years old, and she resided there until her permanent relocation to Chicago. BLEEDING KANSAS, while not autobiographical in the purest sense, is a reflection upon what she experienced and observed in a unique community, a blue-state island in the red state of Kansas. The novel is a deeper exploration of many of the same issues discussed by Paretsky in her recently published WRITING IN AN AGE OF SILENCE, a series of essays that offer her views on a number of the hot-button issues that confront our nation.

BLEEDING KANSAS is the story of three families whose roots are deep in the Jayhawk State. The Grellier family has been farming in Kansas for generations. The father, Jim, his wife Susan, and children Lara and Chip seem to be the ideal American farm family, combining solid traditional values with a contemporary 21st-century view of life. But ugly events will doom their lives. Tension grows between the Grelliers and the Schapens, a neighboring farm family whose fundamental religious views are anathema to the Grelliers. The Schapen family includes the stern matriarch Myra, her deputy sheriff son Aaron, and his two boys, Junior and Robbie. The romantic relationship between Lara Grellier and Robbie Schapen serves as a Shakesperean-like backdrop to the conflict of Paretsky's narrative.

A third family, the Freemantles, appears mostly in a historical context through a diary and an ancient farmhouse that has been the site of mysterious historical events. The house will be temporarily occupied by Gina Haring, a Freemantle niece who has traveled from New York in an effort to re-focus her life. Haring's anti-war and liberal views are the flint that will spark confrontation in the community.

After the 2004 election, author Tom Franks used his home state of Kansas to ask crucial questions of political significance. Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where is the outrage at corporate manipulators? And what ever happened to middle-American progressivism? These were the riddles of WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?, one of the bestselling political tomes of 2005. BLEEDING KANSAS confronts many of those same questions and continues that discussion through Paretsky's fictional portrayal of the ongoing debate in our nation over the relationship between religion and public policy. Since the birth of America, citizens have debated these issues in discussions that have gone beyond words and ended in violence. For some, the debate has raged for so long that they have forgotten what they are fighting over.

For Paretsky, an accomplished and talented writer with a large following, BLEEDING KANSAS represents a noteworthy change of style. Perhaps that is why the novel seems to start slowly. But as the characters are fleshed out and we learn more about their lives, the book's insight and universal truths --- whether found in Chicago, Illinois, or Lawrence, Kansas --- become evident. Paretsky has traveled a long distance from V.I. Warshawski's Chicago, and her audience will enjoy the journey.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars all bled out, January 9, 2008

By 

deeper waters (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bleeding Kansas (Hardcover)

Maybe if I had hung in with this book longer, it would have become fabulous and engrossing but after 155 pages, it was just not worth the struggle. Sara Paretsky has taken a brave step in writing a novel that comes from her heart and history and should not be judged by the same standards as you would evaluate a chick-mystery. However.... The dialogue is tedious with far too many details, words and little content. There is not much depth to the characters and it is, even with concentration, a chore to bring everybody together in to a meaningful whole. It is grammatically flawed and I am quite certain that the 5th commandment deals with killing vs. one's relationship with parents. (p.72) All in all, an effort that really missed the mark for me.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marriage of Ordinary People and A Thousand Acres, May 6, 2010

By 

Harley G. King (Perrysburg, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bleeding Kansas (Hardcover)

Best known for her V.I. Warshawski detective novels set in Chicago, Sara Paretsky recently took a left turn out of her driveway and headed south on an old gravel road until she discovered the Grellier farm in Kansas where she spent time becoming friends with the Grelliers and their neighbors. The novel, Bleeding Kansas, was the result. And nowhere is Warshawski to be found.

With this novel, Paretsky has stretched her writing legs and discovered a whole new world. Many writers, artists and musicians long to break out of the mold that created their success and create something new, exciting and different. This is probably one of the reasons Sara Paretsky wrote this novel. And she succeeded. On one level it is a cross between Judith Guest's Ordinary People and Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres with some of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure.

Unlike the Warshawski novels which are told in the first person through the voice of the detective, this story is told in the third person from the point of view of multiple characters -- mostly the Grelliers. The reason I love the Warshawski novels is that I love V.I. Warshawski. Unfortuately, there is no one character in Bleeding Kansas that I can love unconditionally. I enjoyed being in the company of Susan Grellier, the mother and farmer's wife, until her son is killed in Irag and she goes off the deep end and almost disappears from the story. She is replaced by her daughter and her husband who have problems coping with their strong mother and wife becoming weak and pitiful.

I recommend this novel to all fans of Paretsky and hope that it garnishes her a whole new group of fans as well.