Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.
And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.
With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.
Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.
This was not one of my favorite Grisham works. The book moves along very slowly and the ending, while some may not see it coming, is rather weak. I might have enjoyed this book better in abridged form as much of the prose seems excessive and wasteful and many of the actions unnecessary in moving the story along in the unabridged version - seemed a bit like treading water at times. On the positive side, Grisham does present and develop some wonderfully interesting characters and includes one of my favorite of his previous characters, Harry Rex, in plentiful doses throughout the book and the premise is intriguing.
This was my first Grisham book and I throughly enjoyed the twists and turns. The reader has an extremely pleasant voice and the characters very very distinct.