Sycamore Row

Review by New York Times Review

MY FATHER PRACTICED law in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., on Fiske Place, directly above the train tracks. I used to sit in his windows and shoot rubber bands onto the tops of the cars of the southbound New Haven rattling by. It took some skill. Lawyers from that building liked to point thumbs at the disembarking passengers and say they couldn't wait to charge them "whatever the traffic will bear" - the first law joke I ever got, after it was explained - but not Dad, a Mt. Vernon boy who watched his town get blacker and poorer and allowed many clients to pay what they could afford. He was a lawyer John Grisham would have admired. Grisham likes street lawyers, forgotten lawyers, almost lawyers, tempted lawyers, virtuous lawyers, lawyers frustrated by their decency, unhappy lawyers, tapped-out lawyers, shamed lawyers, stumbling lawyers, small-town and small-office and lost lawyers - them, most of all. He would have frowned when my dad advised me to pursue "the real money" in corporate law, although he would have understood. At the start of "Sycamore Row," Grisham's 26th adult novel and one of his finest, the attorney Jake Brigance needs money bad. "Sycamore Row" is a true literary event - the sequel, nearly a quarter-century later, to "A Time to Kill," Grisham's first and perhaps best-regarded novel. (It is taught in schools and has recently been turned into a Broadway show.) The sequel, surprisingly, doesn't take place in the present, with Jake almost 60 and racially simmering Clanton, Miss., inching closer to the inevitable year when minorities will be the majority in the United States. Instead, this grand, refreshing book is set in 1988, advancing Jake's story barely three years from the Carl Lee Hailey trial that was the centerpiece of "A Time to Kill." At the end of that book, Jake reluctantly conceded that he "was not meant for the big time," and groused about what a sap he was for taking just $900 to defend Hailey, the black father who avenged the all-day rape and attempted drowning of his 10-year-old daughter - one of the most astonishing and visceral pieces of American writing ever set down - by assassinating the two human-mopwaters who perpetrated it. Jake still sees the rectitude in that defense, and warms himself, a bit excessively, in the reverence of the local black community. But - a capital case for $900! The figure comes up a lot. These days, Jake spends, maybe, too much time setting traps to catch his secretary coming in late. And debating whether it might be smart to leave Clanton, since some of the Klansmen who torched his house are starting to come up for parole. The Reagan/Bush F.B.I. isn't returning his calls. So Jake's carrying. He's got a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol in his briefcase, another gun in his car, more in his office. His marriage, which might have dissolved, has not. But he and his wife and daughter are living on top of one another in a tiny box because the genius 35-year-old trial attorney has been outmaneuvered by his insurance company. An air of frustration coats him. You can't entirely blame him for thinking he's Job in a red Saab he can't afford to upgrade. The case that reclaims Jake is a contested will by a timberman and semi-loner named Seth Hubbard, who writes it, then hangs himself. Seth was clearly hated by his family. When they learn how much he was worth ($20 million, give or take), they like him a lot more. Then they discover his new will lops them all out. Grisham has favored the lopping will in his plots before - in "The Rainmaker," his sixth book, and "The Testament," his 10th. When the lawyers, many lawyers, gather to feed, Jake has the honor of representing the new will; Seth chose him because he respected the Hailey defense. But when the other side offers to talk settlement, integrityfirst Jake isn't in such a rush because he wants to stretch his payday. Meanwhile, with proponents of different will variations planning to leave their spouses once the loot is divvied, the trial commences in Chancery Court, and two problems keep palpitating. "Testamentary capacity" - how nuts was cancer-riddled Seth at the end? (Unable to resist a last tag, Seth had inserted his fervent hope that his ex-wives "perish in pain.") And "undue influence." He leaves almost all his money to his attractive, middle-aged black housekeeper, Lettie, who claims to be surprised. Others are less sure. Jake's mentor, Lucien Wilbanks, a brilliant but disbarred lawyer and active drunk, sobers up to remind Jake what's at stake. "Everything is about race in Mississippi," he says. "A simple black woman on the verge of inheriting what might be the largest fortune this county has ever seen, and the decision rests with a jury that's predominantly white. It's race and money, Jake, a rare combination around here." Lucien knows what he's talking about. The grandson of Robert E. Lee Wilbanks, he joined a black church during the civil rights era, sits in the black section at the courthouse (officially abolished but a tradition upheld) and is keen to explain, "I'm one of at least a dozen whites in this county not blinded by racism." Lucien is so compelling he hijacks the narrative midway as Jake recedes like the faces of our beloved dead. In "A Time to Kill," which asked whether any crime is so heinous that taking a life for it is acceptable, Jake was the focus and fury. But Grisham didn't wait all these years to do another "Jake book," which explains why he treats Jake less sympathetically in "Sycamore Row." He's after a portrait of the whole ecosystem of Clanton, where car phones are popping up but a bank remains "notorious for avoiding black customers." "SYCAMORE ROW" REMINDS US that the best legal fiction is written by lawyers - Grisham, Scott Turow (who still practices), Louis Auchincloss, the Michigan judge William Coughlin - but this novel is unavoidably, and thankfully, about far more than just probating a will. Law is indistinguishable from the history of race in the South. Law bound slaves to their masters, and law freed them. An indelible image from "To Kill a Mockingbird" (the book, not the movie) is Calpurnia, the cook, describing how she teaches her son to read using Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England." In "Sycamore Row" the law burdens us with secrets that must be revealed, but the most brutal acts can be balanced by an unexpected act of salvation - not unlike the night Boo Radley came out. If I keep coming back to Maycomb, Ala., in the 1930s, it's because I believe these two books about Clanton will now be read back to back - and, standing together, at last dispel the long shadow of Harper Lee (not a lawyer). "Sycamore Row" could've shed a couple of its burpy suburbanisms (like "restroom"), Ole Miss foobah-isms ("And they were not to be denied") and goyim naches over Christmas morning, and some readers will be chagrined not to learn what happened to several important characters from "A Time to Kill." This is not a fanatical sequel. Indeed, after his first book, Grisham went 13 novels before returning to Clanton as a main setting, but he seems now to land there every five books or so, rattling back and forth in time as he sees fit. The trial in "Sycamore Row" is presided over by the judge who keeled over on his sofa a dozen books ago in "The Summons," but in this book only his wife and maid are dead, leaving a messy, dusty man and house, and the comic aside that "it had become obvious that Judge Atlee left the house each morning without getting properly inspected." So Grisham may decide to come back to Jake again. Or need to. Or Grisham can let it rest here. I hope he does. If Jake never quite becomes the man we want him to, who in hell ever does? CHARLIE RUBIN has written and produced for "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" and other shows. He teaches at the Tisch School of the Arts.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 10, 2013]

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Narrator Beck turns in a fine performance in this audio version of Grisham's outstanding sequel to the classic courtroom drama A Time to Kill. It's 1988 and Clayton, Miss-based lawyer Jake Brigance receives a handwritten will from the recently deceased Seth Hubbard that leaves the majority of his estate-roughly $20 million-to his African-American maid, thus disinheriting his own children. Along with the will is a letter from Hubbard instructing Brigance to defend his last wishes at all costs. With millions on the line, the Hubbard family aggressively contests the old man's will, throwing Brigance into a trial full of twists and turns. Beck's gentle accented reading skillfully captures the old-world, Southern tone of Grisham's novel. Beck also keeps the story moving at a good pace and infuses each character with a distinctive regional voice. A Doubleday hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Grisham returns to Clanton, MS, and Jake Brigance's law practice, both of which were last seen in his 1989 novel (and 1996 film adaptation) A Time To Kill. It is 1989 in Clanton, and shortly before he committed suicide, Seth Hubbard sent Jake a letter hiring him to carry out the wishes in Seth's handwritten will. Jake knows the document will be contentious since Hubbard has divided his sizable estate among his black maid, his brother, and his church but cut out his own children and grandchildren. The children's lawyers set out to prove undue influence by the maid, thanks to the medications Hubbard was on for his terminal cancer. Reader Michael Beck does a masterly job with all the characters, imbuing each with differences in pitch and accent; his portrayal of Jake brings to mind Matthew McConaughey, who played Brigance in the film. VERDICT Grisham's works are always in high demand, and patrons will not be disappointed.-Suanne Roush, Seminole, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A long-after sequel, of a sort, to A Time to Kill (1989), in which dogged attorney Jake Brigance fights for justice in a Mississippi town where justice is not always easy to come by. That's especially true when the uncomfortable question of race comes up, and here, it's a doozy. When local curmudgeon and secret millionaire Seth Hubbard puts an end to a lingering death, he leaves a holographic will placing the bulk of his fortune in the hands of the black woman who's been taking care of him, cutting his children and ex-wives out of the deal. That will also alludes to having seen "something no human should ever see"--a promising prompt, that is to say, for the tangled tale that follows. When Jake brings the housekeeper, Lettie Lang, news of the extent of her newfound wealth, her world begins to unravel as her husband brings in a battery of attorneys to join the small army of lawyers already fighting over Hubbard's will. Grisham, as always, is spot-on when it comes to matters of the bar, and the reader will learn a thing or two from him--for instance, that Mondays are the busiest days for divorce lawyers, "as marriages cracked over the weekends and spouses already at war ramped up their attacks." This being 1988, there's casual sexism aplenty in Grisham's tale; it being the flatland Deep South, there are heaping helpings of racial tension, and it's on that fact that the story turns. Grisham, as ever, delivers a vivid, wisecracking and tautly constructed legal procedural from which the reader might draw at least this lesson: You never want to wind up in front of a judge, even one as wise as the earwig-welcoming Reuben V. Atlee, and if you do, you want to have Jake Brigance on your side. Trademark Grisham, with carefully situated echoes of To Kill a Mockingbird. A top-notch thriller.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 They found Seth Hubbard in the general area where he had promised to be, though not exactly in the condition expected. He was at the end of a rope, six feet off the ground and twisting slightly in the wind. A front was moving through and Seth was soaked when they found him, not that it mattered. Someone would point out that there was no mud on his shoes and no tracks below him, so therefore he was probably hanging and dead when the rain began. Why was that important? Ultimately, it was not. The logistics of hanging oneself from a tree are not that simple. Evidently, Seth thought of everything. The rope was three-quarter-inch braided natural Manila, of some age and easily strong enough to handle Seth, who weighed 160 pounds a month earlier at the doctor's office. Later, an employee in one of Seth's factories would report that he had seen his boss cut the fifty-foot length from a spool a week before using it in such dramatic fashion. One end was tied firmly to a lower branch of the same tree and secured with a slapdash mix of knots and lashings. But, they held. The other end was looped over a higher branch, two feet in girth and exactly twenty-one feet from the ground. From there it fell about nine feet, culminating in a perfect hangman's knot, one that Seth had undoubtedly worked on for some time. The noose was straight from the textbook with thirteen coils designed to collapse the loop under pressure. A true hangman's knot snaps the neck, making death quicker and less painful, and apparently Seth had done his homework. Other than what was obvious, there was no sign of a struggle or suffering. A six-foot stepladder had been kicked aside and was lying benignly nearby. Seth had picked his tree, flung his rope, tied it off, climbed the ladder, adjusted the noose, and, when everything was just right, kicked the ladder and fell. His hands were free and dangling near his pockets. Had there been an instant of doubt, of second-guessing? When his feet left the safety of the ladder, but with his hands still free, had Seth instinctively grabbed the rope above his head and fought desperately until he surrendered? No one would ever know, but it looked doubtful. Later evidence would reveal that Seth had been a man on a mission. For the occasion, he had selected his finest suit, a thick wool blend, dark gray and usually reserved for funerals in cooler weather. He owned only three. A proper hanging has the effect of stretching the body, so Seth's trouser cuffs stopped at his ankles and his jacket stopped at his waist. His black wing tips were polished and spotless. His blue necktie was perfectly knotted. His white shirt, though, was stained with blood that had oozed from under the rope. Within hours, it would be known that Seth Hubbard had attended the 11:00 a.m. worship service at a nearby church. He had spoken to acquaintances, joked with a deacon, placed an offering in the plate, and seemed in reasonably good spirits. Most folks knew Seth was battling lung cancer, though virtually no one knew the doctors had given him a short time to live. Seth was on several prayer lists at the church. However, he carried the stigma of two divorces and would always be tainted as a true Christian. His suicide would not help matters. The tree was an ancient sycamore Seth and his family had owned for many years. The land around it was thick with hardwoods, valuable timber Seth had mortgaged repeatedly and parlayed into wealth. His father had acquired the land by dubious means back in the 1930s. Both of Seth's ex-wives had tried valiantly to take the land in the divorce wars, but he held on. They got virtually everything else. First on the scene was Calvin Boggs, a handyman and farm laborer Seth had employed for several years. Early Sunday morning, Calvin had received a call from his boss. "Meet me at the bridge at 2:00 p.m.," Seth said. He didn't explain anything and Calvin was not one to ask questions. If Mr. Hubbard said to meet him somewhere at a certain time, then he would be there. At the last minute, Calvin's ten-year-old boy begged to tag along, and, against his instincts, Calvin said yes. They followed a gravel road that zigzagged for miles through the Hubbard property. As Calvin drove, he was certainly curious about the meeting. He could not remember another occasion when he met his boss anywhere on a Sunday afternoon. He knew his boss was ill and there were rumors he was dying, but, like everything else, Mr. Hubbard kept it quiet. The bridge was nothing more than a wooden platform spanning a nameless, narrow creek choked with kudzu and crawling with cottonmouths. For months, Mr. Hubbard had been planning to replace it with a large concrete culvert, but his bad health had sidetracked him. It was near a clearing where two dilapidated shacks rotted in the brush and overgrowth and offered the only hint that there was once a small settlement there. Parked near the bridge was Mr. Hubbard's late-model Cadillac, its driver's door open, along with the trunk. Calvin rolled to a stop behind the car and stared at the open trunk and door and felt the first hint that something might be out of place. The rain was steady now and the wind had picked up, and there was no good reason for Mr. Hubbard to leave his door and trunk open. Calvin told his boy to stay in the truck, then slowly walked around the car without touching it. There was no sign of his boss. Calvin took a deep breath, wiped moisture from his face, and looked at the landscape. Beyond the clearing, maybe a hundred yards away, he saw a body hanging from a tree. He returned to his truck, again told the boy to stay inside and keep the doors locked, but it was too late. The boy was staring at the sycamore in the distance. "Stay here now," Calvin said sternly. "And don't get out of the truck." "Yes sir." Calvin began walking. He took his time as his boots slipped in the mud and his mind tried to stay calm. What was the hurry? The closer he got the clearer things became. The man in the dark suit at the end of the rope was quite dead. Calvin finally recognized him, and he saw the stepladder, and he quickly put the scene and the events in order. Touching nothing, he backed away and returned to his truck. It was October of 1988, and car phones had finally arrived in rural Mississippi. At Mr. Hubbard's insistence, Calvin had one installed in his truck. He called the Ford County sheriff's office, gave a brief report, and began waiting. Warmed by the heater and soothed by Merle Haggard on the radio, Calvin gazed through the windshield, ignored the boy, tapped his fingers along with the wipers, and realized he was crying. The boy was afraid to speak. Excerpted from Sycamore Row by John Grisham All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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