Sycamore Row

Sycamore Row by John Grisham

Sycamore Row is John Grisham's newest courtroom thriller and it is a sequel to his twenty odd years ago hit A TIME TO KILL.

We return three years after the Hailey trial to find Jake, Carla and Hannah Brigance struggling to make ends meet as they deal with an insurance company unwilling to pay up for their KKK arson burned home. But their world is about, once again, to be turned upside down.

Seth Hubbard was the richest man in their part of Mississippi, but no one knew it because he kept his life so secret.  Now everyone knows because he has hung himself from a tree and left his millions not to any family member, but almost all of it to his part time maid.

Why?

That's the million dollar, literally, question.

Grisham weaves a great tale and goes back effectively into the mid eighties to show what prejudice among blacks and whites in rural Mississippi was like.

30 years later, has much changed?  We were just in northern MS a couple of months ago and found some open and trusting persons of all colors in and around the town of Corinth.  Maybe we'll learn more when we head back through Mississippi on our way west the end of this year or early next.

In any case, this read was one I could not easily put down, and I feel more enlightened about the people and places we'll be seeing soon.

I encourage a read by you, and a Hollywood producer to consider giving Jake Brigance another shot at the silver screen.  Yes, a digital movie screen is STILL silver!

***** 5 stars.
-Ken