Crows Over a Wheatfield [Hardcover]

Paula Sharp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 1996

The account of a woman who begins an insurrectionist movement against domestic violence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Joel Ratleer, a criminal defense lawyer, wins a controversial child murder case against a nanny (who pleads guilty) by maligning the character of the children's father, even the defendant protests. Ratleer's children, Melanie and Matthew, whom he dominates with cruelty, react in different ways. Forced to help his father with the case, Matthew, 15, consumes an enormous quantity of LSD and has to be institutionalized. Melanie becomes obsessed with work and ultimately becomes a judge in New York, dealing firsthand with cases like her father's. In two such cases, she encounters Mildred Steck, founder of the Railroad, a network of safe havens for parents and children caught in the Family Court system. Through this new-found friendship, Melanie acknowledges her past and finally begins to heal.

From Publishers Weekly

Sharp's new novel about domestic violence may seem a radical departure from the warm, often ribald family stories found in her earlier books, Lost in Jersey City and The Woman Who Was Not All There. Her characters here are as splendidly realized as before, and rendered with insight and humor, as Sharp tackles this serious subject with the legal expertise gleaned from her career as a criminal attorney. She weaves a highly suspenseful, complicated plot paced with unflagging narrative momentum and enhanced with telling details. The story brings together two women?New York judge Melanie Ratleer and idealistic social activist Mildred Steck?who have endured domestic violence. Spanning a period of 40 years, the novel begins in rural Wisconsin in the 1950s, where Melanie, her stepmother and half-brother, Matt, live under the shadow of her father's tyranny. Joel Ratleer is a renowned criminal attorney, but he brutally abuses his family, especially Matt, until the boy has a mental breakdown. Eventually, Matt finds shelter at a halfway house established by Mildred's father. When it is discovered that Mildred's husband, Daniel, is torturing their young son, Mildred flees with the boy after a fatuous judge seems ready to award custody to the viciously mendacious Daniel. Still on the lam, Mildred begins an underground railroad to help other families victimized by violence and legal ineptitude. Communicating with Melanie via the Internet, she pulls her into another case involving a woman who has fled an abusive but socially powerful husband. The court scenes in this novel bristle with the interaction of the participants' personalities; they are riveting. From start to finish, this is an emotionally involving story whose powerful message is commensurate with the social problem it illustrates with gripping accuracy. Major ad/promo; Italian and Spanish rights sold; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (July 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786861177
• ISBN-13: 978-0786861170
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #619,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, funny, beautiful book with amazing characters, October 20, 2000

By 

Sarah C. (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crows Over A Wheatfield (Paperback)

This is definitely a five-star book. As an attorney who works in the Ohio courts, I found Crows over a Wheatfield amazingly accurate - we're lucky that someone who knows the courts writes so well, too. The portrait of Mildred Steck's abusive husband Daniel is ingenious - he really does talk and act like such people do. I love the way he contradicts himself without even realizing it, the way he seems completely disassociated from his own nastiness. In real life, I think men like him would probably be more dangerous, although I can see why Sharp would have wanted to rein him in a little, to draw a more subtle portrait. My favorite character in this book is Daniel's wife, Mildred. I like her because she defies all stereotypes of battered women - she's just an ordinary person who had the misfortune of marrying someone who was not so ordinary. Mildred is so full of life and humor - the best thing about this book is the way Sharp, astonishingly, keeps you laughing even in the worst of times. The novel's fourth book, in which Mildred starts an underground railroad for battered women, was the best of the four books of the novel. The detailing of how the railroad was set up was so ingenious, and its architects and philosophy so wry and amusing. Quite an indictment of the legal system. Anyone who ever thinks they might end up in a matrimonial court case should read this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Gripping Masterpiece, October 14, 2000

By 

B. Hamilton (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crows Over A Wheatfield (Paperback)

This the best book I've read in many years. It tackles a difficult subject -- how domestic violence is mishandled by our courts in custody cases -- but somehow Sharp takes on this topic in such a way that you never feel overwhelmed by it. Her characters are riveting. She has an uncanny ability to step into the skin of her narrators and to deliver a perfectly convincing story from their points of view -- and you never question their perspective as long as they've got hold of you. Whether or not you agree with the views of this novel's narrator, you certainly come to understand them in a detailed, intelligent way. You are moved. This must be very hard for authors to pull off, because when you see the real thing in a book liike this, you realize how rare it is.

This is a big book -- it spans 30 years in a family's life, and you get to know and care about people who surprise you -- Matt Ratleer, the schizophrenic brother of the narrator Melanie, must be the first really psychotic person I've encountered in a novel, who is presented with such breathtaking realism and compassion and without condescension. You don't just get to like him -- you love him. Melanie's friend Mildred -- who starts an underground railroad for battered women fleeing unjust and dangerous custody rulings -- is so unique, so zany and passionate and brilliant that you wish she was your friend.

And the villains! No one writes villains like Paula Sharp! This book has one of the best villains I've seen in years -- Mildred's increasingly violent husband Daniel. What makes him so scary is he's so real. He's surely a sociopath, but I've never seen a sociopath laid out so carefully and convincingly, without the gore and fanfare of Hollywood, but intelligently, realistically. Every action he takes is both surprising and completely credible.

This book is a masterpiece. Read it and tell everyone you know about it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Law and cynicism, October 25, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (potsdam, new york) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crows Over A Wheatfield (Paperback)

Paula Sharp's 1996 novel Crows Over a Wheatfield tells the story of Melanie Ratleer, daughter of an extremely successful -- but abusive -- trial lawyer father, who rises in her profession to become first a big-firm lawyer then a U.S. District Judge nominee. Throughout her life, both in her own household and later through her practice, she encounters situations where unfair or bigoted judges control case outcome, where money conquers justice, and where the law finally just wears litigants down. In one particularly telling passage, a senior, very compasionate, lawyer explains why a case should be tried before a jury, rather than a judge alone:

"A bench trial! That would be worse. [T]he face that leans over the bench, swaddled in black rayon, is not Solomon's It's a lawyer's. A lawyer dressed up in a black costume. And what kind of judge would we get? How much will he know about people? Is he stupid? Prejudiced? Failure of imagination is the heart of the law."

The last sentence -- about failure of the imagination being the law's lifeblood -- really gives one pause. In many respects, I cannot disagree, at least as the system often works. In the end, Melanie first becomes aware of then involved in a widespread plan of civil disobedience, a group of persons who, having concluded that the courts cannot protect themselves or their children from violent abuse, must take the law in their own hands. Sharp writes with great passion and vision, and draws a cast of believable and sympathetic characters. I suspect any reader will finish the book either agreeing with her point of view (I did) or throwing the novel aside in disgust. I recommend this novel very highly.