Sycamore Row

Sycamore Row
Author	John Grisham
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Legal thriller
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	October 22, 2013
Pages	464 pp (Hardcover 1st edition)
ISBN	978-0385537131 (Hardcover 1st edition)

Sycamore Row is a novel by John Grisham. It is a direct sequel to his first novel, A Time to Kill, and again features Jake Brigance as the main character. It was released on October 22, 2013.^[1]

Plot

According to USA Today, "Jake Brigance returns to the courtroom in a 'dramatic showdown as Ford County again confronts its tortured history.'"^[2]

Set in fictional Clanton, Mississippi, three years after the sensational events in the trial of Carl Lee Hailey (A Time to Kill) an employee of Mr Seth Hubbard is instructed to meet his boss at a location by a Sycamore tree at 2PM on a Sunday.

The employee finds Mr. Hubbard dead, hung from a tree because his terminal lung cancer was too painful and he was ready to end it. Accompanied with the body are very specific funeral and burial instructions.

In his office, we re-join Jake Brigance who has lost his secretary, home, and dog thanks to the KKK who tried to intimidate him during the Hailey trial, Brigance is currently tied up in litigation with the Insurance Company after his house was burnt down and has little to no money to show from the Hailey trial. He is informed by his new secretary that a letter has arrived for him from one Seth Hubbard.

Brigance opens the letter and reads that Mr. Hubbard has written a new holographic will that renounces one he wrote a year ago in which he had left money to his daughter and son as well as their grandchildren.

In his holographic will, Mr. Hubbard stipulates that his children will receive nothing from the will, five percent will be given to his Church, while the other five percent will be left for his brother. The remaining 90% is to be given to his black housekeeper Letitia (Lettie) Lang and that the will must be filed following the funeral and not a moment sooner so his children, who rarely visited him during his cancer, can put on a show then be left with nothing.

Mr Hubbard notes that his children will contest it because they are greedy and that Mr. Brigance has to do whatever it takes to make sure the holographic will is the enforced will. He says he chose Jake because of the admirable work that Jake did at the Hailey trial.

After a hotly contested battle which yields many twists and turns and the trial looks lost for Brigance and Lang, a sensational deposition given by Mr Hubbard's brother, Ancil, explains why Mr Hubbard left the money to his housekeeper and the significance of the Sycamore Tree which Mr Hubbard hung himself on.

References