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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2002, 352 pages
Paperback:
Mar 2003, 352 pages
A novel of searing intensity and uncompromising vision. Part mystery, part legal thriller - set in a small southern town during one brutal, hot, and unforgiving summer that lays bare the potential of the human heart to hate and, ultimately, to heal.
From David L. Robbins, bestselling author of The End of War and War of the
Rats, comes a novel of searing intensity and uncompromising vision. Part mystery, part legal thriller, it is a story of crime and punishment set in a small
southern town during one brutal, hot, and unforgiving summer that lays bare thepotential of the human heart to hate–and, ultimately, to heal.
Scorched Earth
The inhabitants of Good Hope, Virginia, haven't felt the cooling effects of
rain in weeks. The crops are withering. The ground is parched. There is no
relief in sight. With the town a tinderbox waiting to explode, all it takes is a
spark to ignite all the prejudice, the rage, and the secrets that are so
carefully kept hidden. And then, in the midst of the terrible heat, a tragedy
occurs. A baby is born and dies in her mother's arms. The child, Nora Carol,
is buried quickly and quietly the next day in a church graveyard. It should have
ended right there–but it didn't, for Nora Carol is of mixed race.
The white deacons of Good Hope's Victory Baptist Church, trying to protect the
centuries-old traditions of their cemetery, have the body exhumed. That night
the church is set ablaze, and the sole witness is the only suspect–Elijah
Waddell, Nora Carol's father.
Nat Deeds, a former prosecutor and an exile of Good Hope, is pressed into
service as Elijah's attorney. With a politically savvy prosecutor and a
vindictive sheriff aligned against him, Nat knows it will be nearly impossible
to get Elijah acquitted. But Elijah refuses to accept a plea.
As the evidence mounts, Nat begins to suspect there is something his client isn't
telling him, and the next revelation turns Good Hope into a powder keg: a body
is found in the ashes of the church. Now Elijah is accused of murder, and the
case is no longer a matter of winning or losing, but of life or death.
The only way Nat can save his client is to scratch and claw for any shred of
evidence, even if he has to bend the law to find it. As the summer heat
intensifies and passions reach their boiling point, Nat must navigate through
the incendiary secrets kept by friends and neighbors, by the guilty and the
innocent, to an act of justice that has nothing to do with the law.
One
The place where they lie making the child is beautiful. They lie on a bed
of ferns, which like a cushion of feathers tickles them. Only a few
strides off the old dirt road, they are beneath a tall red oak, thick as a
chimney, bearded with gray bark; the tree is a gentle old presence. The
leaves of the oak bear the first blush of whistling autumn.
If they were to stand on that spot they could see the fields. South lie
forty acres of beans, leafy and ripe for the harvest machinery resting now
after church on this Sunday afternoon. High pines and turning sugar maples
make this field a green leafy loch where every breeze riffles. North of
the road, beyond barbed wire and honeysuckle, is a cleared pasture for the
cows, which are out of sight behind hills that rise and roll down,
suggesting by their smooth undulation the couple lying under the oak.
He is a black man, blacker than ...
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