This is another Book Club recommendation, A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci. The calamity is the mix of morality between races. This is set in the American South of the 1960's. Segregation had just ended and is grudging, not accepted, but rather enforced by law. People still automatically kept the same roles as before segregation ended. Blacks automatically sat in the back of the bus, went into back doors, and didn't mix.
The story begins with a black man, Jerome, being arrested for the murder of his two white employers. Immediately, the reader sees the language and treatment, the accused endures. Jerome's mother-in-law asks Jack Lee to be his attorney. They know each other and live in the same town, albeit different segregated neighborhoods.
Jack knows he doesn't have the skill nor experience to win the case, but he was willing to give it his best. In walks Desiree DuBose, a hot shot civil rights lawyer from Chicago. Plus, she's black. Together they try to defend Jerome.
This book should be recommended reading for high school history/literature classes. I was alive then and had forgotten how bad it really was. It was bad, really bad. Desiree stood up to all the vile harassment and hateful vitriol. Besides the evil vibes, Jack's sister was killed, Jerome's wife was arrested, also, and all the families involved were traumatized.
The reader of course knows Jerome is being railroaded, but the story includes how the witnesses play out on the witness stand. It seemed Jerome had no chance. Reading their testimonies and Jack and Desiree's rebuttals sound convincing, but the jury is all white and not Jerome's peers.
The ending is satisfactory
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