A Calamity of Souls
The brand new novel from the number one bestselling author of Simply Lies
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- €11.99
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- €11.99
Publisher Description
'This is David Baldacci at his best' - Michael Connelly
'I couldn’t stop turning the pages, fascinated, moved, horrified' – Alex Michaelides
'Baldacci on top form - a tragic, gripping and intensely believable thriller.' - Peter James
'A tour de force' – S.A. Cosby
'May be the best novel David Baldacci has ever written' - Scott Turow
'A tale of high tension, false assumptions and stubborn humanity' - Stacey Abrams
Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a murder case sets a duo of Black and white lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from the number one bestselling author David Baldacci.
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in town. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.
Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Baldacci's stirring latest (after Simply Lies) finds Black Vietnam veteran Jerome Washington on trial in 1968 Virginia for murdering Leslie and Anne Randolph, his married white employers and two of the most prominent citizens in fiercely segregated Freeman County. After washing the Randolphs' Buick, Jerome entered their house to get his weekly pay, only to find their bloody corpses on the floor. He tried to "help them out," he says, by moving them off the ground, but just as he was propping Anne up into a chair, the police arrived and placed him under arrest. Certain of his innocence, Jerome's grandmother-in-law reaches out to Jack Lee, a local white criminal defense lawyer, who agrees to take the racially charged case despite his lack of experience with murder trials. Feeling immediately out of his depth, Jack teams up with Desiree DuBose, a Black attorney at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund; together, they work to save Jerome from the electric chair. Baldacci generates satisfying tension from Jack and Desiree's clashing personalities, and his real-life experiences both as an attorney and as a child in 1960s Virginia lend the proceedings an air of uncommon authenticity. This ranks among the author's best.
