What You Leave Behind
A Novel
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
Award-winning author Wanda Morris returns with a powerful, haunting thriller following a lawyer who after the mysterious disappearance of a local landowner and the death of his sister just months before, uncovers a conspiracy that dates back to Reconstruction and persists in half the United States today.
Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm. She needs what the Geechee people of coastal Georgia call a “dayclean,” a fresh start.
She returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. To make peace with all her loss, she often drives through the city. One day, she unwittingly finds herself on the oceanfront property of a loner widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. He threatens her and warns her to never return. But shortly after, he disappears, and his very expensive property is quickly put up for sale. Curious about what has happened to the man, Deena digs into his disappearance and finds a family legacy at risk. What starts out as a bit of curious snooping, turns into a deadly game of illegal land grabs and property redevelopment in poor and rural communities with dark and powerful forces at work.
Without realizing it, Deena finds herself caught up in a nightmarish scheme that threatens her community and her family. She’ll need help and finds it in a close but unlikely source because she knows she must do whatever it takes to stop the sinister forces at play before she becomes their next target.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Morris (Anywhere You Run) returns with a tense and topical legal thriller. Black attorney Deena Wood has moved back to her hometown of Brunswick, Ga., following an ugly divorce, her mother's death, and her firing from an esteemed Atlanta firm. On an afternoon drive to clear her head, Deena encounters Holcomb Gardner, a Black septuagenarian who orders her, at gunpoint, to stay away from his trailer, insisting that he's "not interested in selling" his and his recently deceased sister's property. Unable to shake the interaction, Deena returns to the trailer a week later, only to find Holcomb missing and a "for sale" sign in his yard. Rattled, Deena digs into Holcomb's situation and discovers he and his sister may have been victimized by the legal theory of heirs' rights, which has historically helped white developers sell properties owned by Black families against their will. With similar cases springing up around Brunswick, Deena sets out to determine who's behind them—and whether they'd kill for the chance to profit. Morris nimbly balances character and plot, anchoring the mystery's big questions in the emotional lives of Deena and her fellow Brunswick residents. This entertains as much as it enlightens.
