Page 14 - Gears and Ears November 2013

Book Reviews

John Grisham - Sycamore R Re R Ro ow
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John Grisham - Sycamore Rooww
John GrGrisham - Syisham - Sycamorcamore
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Thanksgiving by Ellen Cooney
Thanksgiving by Ellen Cooneyby Ellen Cooney
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Ellen
by Ellen Cooney
Thanksgiving by
Cooney
John Grisham takes you back to where it all began . . .
John Grisham’s A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time. Now we
return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again finds himself
embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial-a trial that will expose old racial tensions and
force Ford County to confront its tortured history.
Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs
himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that
drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as
the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just
three years earlier.

The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had
chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once
known as Sycamore Row?

In Sycamore Row, John Grisham returns to the setting and the compelling characters that first established him as America’s
favorite storyteller. Here, in his most assured and thrilling novel yet, is a powerful testament to the fact that Grisham remains the
master of the legal thriller, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of A Time to Kill.

Reviewed by Goodreads.com

One family. One table. One meal. 350 years. This dramatic, highly inventive novel presents
the story of one family through many generations, as Thanksgiving dinner is prepared.

The narrative moves swiftly and richly through time and changes as we experience the lives
of the Morleys against the background of historical events. This is history that comes fully
alive, for we become part of the family ourselves, sharing their fortunes and tragedies,
knowing their truths from their lies, watching their possessions handed down or lost forever.
All along, in the same house, in the same room, Morley women are getting dinner ready,
one part at a time, in a room that begins with a hearth of Colonial times and ends as a
present-day kitchen.

Thanksgiving serves up history in a lively, entertaining way that offers an original viewpoint
of the everyday concerns of one family across the generations.(less)

ebook, 248 pages
Published September 16th 2013