Ward Just

“Reading a Ward Just novel is like sitting down to a meal of your
favorite comfort food.  The writing is both simple and elegant and,
most importantly, nourishing for the reader’s soul.”

Stuart Shiffman, Bookreporter.com

Such a literary void is one Just has been only too happy to fill.  As Judith Martin wrote in the New York Times Book Review, Just is “not only the most literary chronicler of the daily lives and moral dilemmas of contemporary politicians, bureaucrats, intelligence agents, military officers, diplomats, lawyers, and journalists, but one of the few novelists even interested in picturing such people realistically.”

Just comes by such realism honestly.  The son and grandson of newspaper publishers (the Waukegan News-Sun and the Libertyville Independent Register), Just began his writing career in the early 1960s as a journalist, working first for the family newspapers and then at the Chicago, Washington, and London bureaus of Newsweek magazine.  He eventually joined legendary editor Ben Bradlee at The Washington Post, where Bradlee sent Just to Saigon to cover the Vietnam war.  His reporting was considered some of the best to emerge from that arena.  According to David Halberstam, “perhaps no reporter working for a major daily paper wrote as well from Vietnam, with as much subtlety and grace as he did.”

But journalism was not in Just’s blood the way it must have been for his father and grandfather.  After returning from his two-year stint in Vietnam, Just left The Washington Post to concentrate on writing fiction based on his experiences in both Vietnam and as a political correspondent in Washington. 

Fascinated by the political machinations that motivate people, both in and out of the public eye, Just chooses not to pass judgment on his characters, but relies on his journalistic training to be a keen observer of their habits and actions, foibles and idiosyncrasies.  As Douglas Keenland stated in an article for the Chicago Tribune Books section, Just “writes books for grownups who like to read. He writes of the mind and of the heart and of the soul, although he does not mention these things.”

Born in 1935 in Michigan City, Indiana, Just is the author of nineteen books.  He has won National Magazine Awards for nonfiction (1970) and fiction (1980); the Washington Monthly Award for political fiction (1973); the Chicago Tribune Heartland award (1989); was finalist for the National Book Award for fiction (1997); received a book of the year citation from the New York Times (1999) and a notable book citation from the American Library Association (1999); and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005 for An Unfinished Season.

Novels

American Ambassador, The  (1987)
Echo House (1997)
Dangerous Friend, A (1999)
Lowell Limpett: and Two Stories (2001)
Weather in Berlin (2002) LP
An Unfinished Season (2004) LP
Forgetfulness (2006)

Additional Works Available from LINC Libraries

Ambition & Love (1994) — owned by Batavia, Bloomingdale, Glen Ellyn, Villa Park, West Chicago
Translator, The (1991) — owned by Batavia, Bloomingdale
Twenty-one:  Selected Stories (1990) — owned by West Chicago
Jack Gance (1989) — owned by Batavia, Itasca, West Chicago, Geneva
American Blues, The (1984) — owned by Batavia
In the City of Fear (1982) — owned by West Chicago
A Family Trust:  A Novel (1978) — owned by Franklin Park, West Chicago
Nicholson at Large:  A Novel (1975) — owned by Geneva
Stringer (1974) — owned by West Chicago