Arc Of Justice by Kevin Boyle

Race in America keeps raising its head and this book gives you some good background into why that is the case.  It centers on a famous trial in the 1920's involving a black doctor (Dr. Sweet) who bought a home in Detroit in a neighborhood who's occupants were all white.  A mob formed in front of the house, the occupants inside the house fired on the crowd and killed a man.  All the occupants were then tried for murder.

The newly-formed NAACP was looking for an incident that could move the deteriorating race relations in America towards greater justice for blacks and decided to put most of its resources behind winning an acquittal for the home owners.  They hired Clarence Darrow, among others, to take the case and it became a headline-making event.

The story itself is interesting but the book reads almost as if there were two authors.  In the first 100 pages or so, Boyle tells the same story repeatedly and speculates way too many times as to what Dr. Sweet must have been thinking or feeling at a particular time.  Skim that part.  Once past that, the story focuses on the history of the KKK, the NAACP, Clarence Darrow, the major trials of the era, and culminates in a good depiction of the trials that resulted from the incident.  All of that was interesting and well told.

This is a worthwhile read, if for no other reason than to better understand forces that are still with us today to varying degrees throughout the country.  Those forces are having an impact on current laws and practices, even as we believe the past is the past and no longer relevant.  It is.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham

I really needed a change of pace after the last few books I've read and Jackie recommended John Grisham's latest.  Good call.  It takes you to three years after the end of his first book, A Time To Kill, and dives into another plot involving race, twists in emotions and flow, lots of lawyers and another trial as memorable as the first one.

In this instance, a rich man kills himself to end the pain of cancer right after making a new will that removes his heirs from any inheritance.  To make matters more difficult in this rural Mississippi town, he left most of it to his black house keeper of 3 years. That his family contests the new will is a no-brainer.  Jake Brigance is the one picked by the deceased, even though the two never met.  The central question of why would the deceased do such a thing is the focus of the trial.

The plot is an excellent follow-up to A Time To Kill and satisfies on a number of levels, from a host of interesting characters, a number of dirty tricks, and an ending believable enough to be satisfying.  If you liked ATTK, you'll like this as well.

"The Round House" by Louise Erdrich

I read "The Round House" while home over Christmas and I think I finished it in about two days. Partially because there were several inches (feet?) of snow on the ground, I was on vacation, and cozying up by the fire to read good books is one of my favorite things. But it's also because the way in which Louise Erdrich unfolds this troubling and compelling story of a family in peril is really captivating.

Basically, the story takes place in the 1980s on a North Dakota reservation and the main character, Joe, learns that his mother has been brutalized. However, she won't retell the story in order to help have the crime solved, so we watch as a family comes near the brink of falling apart while trying desperately to put the pieces back together and figure out who is responsible for the attack.

I don't want to give too much away, but this is a beautifully told story with a few twists and turns that make the hours fly by. I definitely recommend this to pretty much anyone, and owe my mom and dad for recommending it to me!

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

If you have read Ms. Hillenbrand's previous book, "Seabiscuit," then you know she has a real talent for taking an historical figure and painting a well-researched and interesting story of that life.  In the earlier instance, it was of a remarkable horse and the people around him.  In "Unbroken" she once again takes an historical figure and presents a story of a man with tremendous courage and tenacity who most people today have never heard of but can never forget once they are introduced.

He is Louis Zamperini, a man who started out as a troublesome kid and eventually settled into becoming one of the premier distance runners just prior to WWII.  He was so good he went to Berlin for the 1936 Olympics and was on pace to break the 4 minute mile by the time of the 1940 games when war broke out and thoughts of international games were put on hold.

He became a flier and his plane crashed in the Pacific.  The story thereafter was of his long voyage in a raft, followed by being captured by the Japanese, which in turn spiraled downward into a different long distance story of torture and survival.  It takes nothing away from the story to know that he lived through that and his subsequent struggle to adjust once he returned to civilian life.  The tale is well told and compelling, one of those books that is read in long sittings.  It makes you marvel at Zamperini's accomplishments and endurance and at Hillenbrand's skill to tell the story so well.  It should be a heck of a movie when it comes out this year.