3 h 0 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 3 h 0 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when public duty asks for one choice, and the heart insists on another?
In The Light That Lies, George Barr McCutcheon brings romance into the courtroom. Duty and desire pull in different directions, and a verdict promises to alter lives. Love is not the only claim that matters here. Honour and obligation stand beside it, making private longing a question with public consequences.
This early twentieth century American romance offers direct storytelling, open feelings and clear emotional stakes. The courtroom gives the conflict a public stage, where what people want meets what they owe. Read for the pull between love and honour, and for a story that asks how either can guide a difficult choice.
What you’ll discover
- Duty against desire Explore the strain of wanting something that a public role may not allow.
- Love beside obligation Consider what love asks when honour places its own demands on the heart.
- A courtroom stage Enter a setting where private feelings meet the pressure of a public decision.
- A life-altering verdict Read toward a judgment whose consequences reach beyond the courtroom and into personal lives.
- Feelings in plain sight Enjoy a romance whose direct style gives love and moral choices room to matter.
Who will love it
Readers who like witty romances, courtroom scenes and affectionate comedy about city life in the early 1900s. It suits anyone who enjoys a hero tangled in his own good manners and a love story told in a sparkling voice.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A man who always escapes jury duty
- Sampson meets the granddaughter and is caught
- The State's case and a witness under pressure
- A jury in love and a defense with one witness
- Eleven to one in the jury room
- What the story is really about
Who’s who
- SampsonA rich, honorable young New Yorker who has dodged jury duty for years and now cannot escape a trial or his growing love.
- Alexandra HildebrandThe calm, clever granddaughter of the accused, who sits beside him in court and quietly shapes the jury, trusting in his innocence.
- James W. HildebrandA dignified old man accused of embezzling from his firm, who returns from exile to clear his name but will not explain why he left.
- Mr. StevensThe prim State witness and head of the company, whose old quarrel with the Hildebrand family comes out under cross-examination.
- Mr. O'BrienThe shabby but sharp defense lawyer who exposes the motives of the prosecution's witnesses and defends the old man with passion.
- TurpleSampson's faithful valet, an Englishman who is baffled by his master's cheerful mood once the jury has caught him.
- Juror SevenA dreamy, lovesick electrical supplier who follows Miss Hildebrand around town and becomes Sampson's eager follower.
- Mr. WilksThe good-humored assistant district attorney who explains afterward how a woman's charm can unsettle a courtroom.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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The Light That Lies
A rich man dodges jury duty for years, then lands on a trial where the defendant's granddaughter watches him.
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In short
The Light That Lies is a comic romance of the courtroom by George Barr McCutcheon, an American novelist who died in 1928. It follows a rich young New Yorker named Sampson, who has spent years inventing excuses to escape jury service.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A man who always escapes jury duty
Sampson is thirty, rich, handsome and a Harvard graduate. He is president of the Sampson Steamship and Navigation Company, a job he inherited from his father and does not pretend to earn. His real occupation is dodging jury service in the New York courts. He has talked his way out of murder trials by claiming doubts about capital punishment, circumstantial evidence and the plea of insanity.
The trouble is that excuses wear out. Sampson is now being drawn for the humbler courts, where he cannot avoid even the most trivial cases. He complains that the whole jury system is wrong, since a man is supposed to be tried by his equals, and he thinks a ruffian and a bank president should not share the same twelve neighbors. He has missed weddings, football games and the arrival of ocean liners because of summonses. He refuses to fix things through friends downtown, because he thinks that is beneath him.
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What is The Light That Lies about?
It follows Sampson, a wealthy New Yorker who has always escaped jury duty and is finally seated on the jury at an embezzlement trial. The accused man's lovely granddaughter attends every day, and Sampson falls in love with her while weighing his duty.
Who is Sampson in The Light That Lies?
Sampson is a thirty-year-old Harvard graduate and the inherited president of a steamship company. He is honest, gallant and comically proud, and he is known to the court as juror number three.
When was The Light That Lies written and is it a true story?
It is a work of fiction by George Barr McCutcheon, who died in 1928, set in the New York of the early 1900s. The characters and the trial are invented, though courtrooms and city places are drawn from real life.
The author
George Barr McCutcheon
1866–1928 · American novelist
George Barr McCutcheon was an American novelist born in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, in 1866. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Lafayette, Indiana. His novels include Graustark, published in 1901, and Brewster’s Millions, published in 1902 under the name Richard Greaves. He died in New York City in 1928.
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