Wheat Fields
Novels
By:
Bill Sampson
Wheatfields is an alluring story of unexpected love and clashing cultures set in America’s rural heartland, Lawrence, Kansas, home of Kansas University and its celebrated NCAA Champion Jayhawk basketball team.
Richie Armstrong moves with his mother from Salina, Kansas, to Lawrence at the start of his senior year of high school. An exceptional shooting guard, he is briefly chronicled by Sean Grogan, the sports editor of the Lawrence Journal World, while at Free State High and then extensively during his freshman year on KU’s basketball team.
Farieh Bukhari, a brilliant and beautiful student who comes to Kansas from Tehran, tests out of her mathematics major as a first-semester freshman and encounters Richie at Wheatfields, the artisan bakery where she works. Later that semester, Farieh testifies in the academic hearing where a super-star philosophy professor—defended by his friend on the law school faculty, Andrew Stevenson—answers charges he is a racist who lost control of his classroom when confronted by one of his students, a confrontation set up by his jealous department head. Richie becomes infatuated with Farieh on meeting her at Thanksgiving, Farieh’s feelings for Richie grow during their spring semester, and the novel closes as the two of them struggle to say “Goodbye” for the summer.
Ardent fans of KU's basketball prowess will love Bill Sampson's new novel. But Wheat Fields is more than a compelling sports story. Sampson's novel also explores such perennial on-campus topics as student romance and academic jealousy, including a colleague's desire for revenge against one of the university's most popular professors.
-- Bill Tuttle, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Kansas
Wheat Fields is a wonderful book filled with engaging characters brought to life by witty, literate, but accessible and engaging prose. And while there are so many reasons to love this book, as a lawyer, I was simply blown away by Bill’s description of the academic proceeding where a charismatic and talented professor is forced to defend himself against charges of misconduct.
-- Walt Cofer, formerly with Shook, Hardy & Bacon and one of the nation’s premier trial lawyers