John Grisham is an activist and board member for the Innocence Project, an organization that fights to exonerate prisoners it deems wrongfully convicted.
This 2010 book looks at the issues of the death penalty through the wrongful conviction of 17-year-old Donté Drumm. He is a star on the high school football team and loved by the girls.
Donté’s is accused of murdering Nicole Yarber, a cheerleader.
It’s set in football mad Slone, Texas.
It’s a very good book. Well told. Some might find it a bit preachy. Repetitive in places.
Travis Boyette is the real killer. The most memorable of the characters, for me. Seems Grisham is skilled at writing complex, weird and evil bad guys.
I agree with Grisham on the death penalty. I’m against it. And still recall the day I made that decision. It was in a High School class in the 1970s where we were discussing the topic.
I’ll consider the USA a backwards nation until they ban it.
The USA will be backwards until the Republican Party finally starts to evolve their platform in the area of human rights.
United States, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Belarus, Oman, and Taiwan are some of the most prosperous nations that still have it.
Much of the fictional case presented in the novel is taken from some real-life cases involving defendants on death row.
