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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 No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the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. And perhaps someone
else.

© Copyright 2002, Bookreporter.com. Reprinted with permission
by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights
reserved.