The Dividing Line: 2A Novel Hardcover – March 1, 1993 by Richard Parrish
 
World War II vet Joshua Rabb takes a job as an attorney for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he becomes caught in the crossfire between Papago Indians and greedy local politicos. 25,000 first printing. National ad/promo.
 
From Publishers Weekly
A criminal lawyer in Arizona, Parrish draws on the history of his home state to provide a colorful backdrop for his absorbing second novel (after Our Choice of Gods ), a brisk, tightly plotted thriller/courtroom drama. In 1946, after his wife is killed in an accident, Jewish lawyer and wounded war veteran Joshua Rabb takes a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and moves with his two children to Tucson, Ariz., hoping that the arid Southwestern environment will restore his body and soul. He finds a squalid town of 25,000 Mexican Catholics and 15,000 "redneck Baptists," none of whom want to mix with the nearby Papago Indians, whose reservation is separated from Tucson by a narrow irrigation ditch--the "dividing line" of the title. A 13-year-old girl's corpse was discovered in that ditch two days before Rabb's arrival, and soon other bodies are unearthed. The New York-bred lawyer finds himself ostracized by the town's residents for defending a Papago man charged with murder and rape; then he becomes embroiled in a plot involving blackmail, crooked politicians and land grabs. Energetically told, the narrative provides an interesting, well-rounded protagonist in Rabb, whose return is promised in a sequel to be published in 1994.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 
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