Ned Ayres story, the protagonist in Just's nineteenth novel, begins when he's a young boy in Herman, Indiana, a typical, small Midwestern town. His father is the local judge, respected and well known and Ned, the well liked son. Much to his father's dismay, Ned early becomes enamoured with newspapers, refuses to go to college, and begins his career at the Herman Press-Gazette. His career soon takes off, as he becomes editor of various newspapers during his life, in Indianapolis, Chicago, and finally, in Washington, D.C. We follow his life as an editor as the newspaper business he loves begins its decline, with digressions about two or three people who have had the greatest influence in his life, one a local haberdashery with a shady background, two, Elaine, the love of his life who dies in Africa, and three, the owner of the Washington paper. Ned is always the steady one, never one to let passions rule over his career, his editing, and never does succumb to the lure of the world, never going to Europe despite the protestations of his friends, not even the West Coast. The novel ends with Ned in his 80's, retired and settled in an estate on Maryland's Eastern Shore, as he looks back at his life and attempts to write his autobiography with little success. Not my favorite of Just's novels but an easy read, with not much plot or suspense, a touch of nostalgia for a world now gone, and the story of a life 'perhaps well lived,'
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