Seraphim
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Publisher Description
"Seraphim is a thrilling page-turner, as well as a deeply humane investigation into the many forms of justice. It will make you look at the world differently---as much as a book could hope to do.” - Jonathan Safran Foer, author, Everything is Illuminated
From a former New Orleans public defender comes a gritty and thrilling interrogation of crime, violence, and the limits of justice in the chaotic times after Hurricane Katrina…
A 16-year-old confesses to the murder of a local celebrity—a hero of New Orleans’s shaky post-storm recovery... The boy’s father, doing life in prison on the installment plan for a series of minor offenses, will do anything to save him...
Enter Ben Alder, a carpetbagging attorney (and former rabbinical seminary student) who has drifted down to New Orleans. He winds up defending them both.
Ben and his partner, Boris, are public defenders obsessed with redeeming their case history of failures, and willing to do anything to protect their clients. As Ben tries to disrupt a corrupt and racist criminal justice system that believes an inexplicable crime has been solved, he confronts his own legacy of loss and faith. And as the novel hurtles towards its tragic, redemptive conclusion, Ben finds himself an onlooker and a perpetrator where he thought he was the hero.
A riveting and propulsive story about loyalty and grief, Seraphim is also an unflinching cross-examination of a broken legal system; a heartbreaking portrait of a beautiful, lost city, filled with children who kill and are killed; and a discomforting reflection on privilege, prejudice, and power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A teenager stands accused of killing a Hurricane Katrina aid worker in former New Orleans public defender Perry's promising debut. Ben Alder, a rabbinical seminary student turned defense attorney, is assigned the case of 16-year-old Robert Johnson, who has confessed to shooting 36-year-old restaurateur Lillie Scott in early 2008. Scott had become well-known for leading post-hurricane recovery efforts in the Seventh Ward, and her killing has shaken the city. As Ben learns more about Robert and his father, who's serving life in prison for a series of minor offenses, he comes to believe that, though the teenager was discovered with the weapon that killed Scott, he may have been set up to take the fall. Determined to prove Robert innocent and enhance his own reputation, Ben plunges into the city's underbelly, and faces a crisis of faith in the process. Perry's focus is less on the murder mystery than on the rhythms of post-Katrina New Orleans and Ben's shifting psychology, which he explores with often-breathtaking prose ("There's a terror of seeing, the vacancy that isn't and the emptiness that is," Ben muses, comparing himself to the Seraphim, six-winged angels that shield their eyes from God). Crime fiction fans will be eager to see what Perry does next.
