However, Lang’s interests parallel Jake’s, so his advice can assist her in knowing what to do next. It is Jake’s duty to protect Hubbard’s intentions and make a case for the final will, not to act as attorney for Lettie Lang. Once he has gotten over the unexpected windfall that has fallen in his lap, Jake’s job is to ascertain Hubbard’s state of mind and the status of the estate, file the appropriate papers with the court, and face a battery of lawyers hired by Hubbard’s children to invalidate the handwritten will.

Even more shocking: the bulk of Hubbard’s fortune has been left to his black housekeeper, Lettie Lang, a woman with only a short association with her employer and no idea why he has chosen her as beneficiary. In the late ‘80s, over twenty million dollars is a huge amount in a town of few millionaires. The first shock: Jake is named as the lawyer to defend the hand-written will Hubbard has left to supersede any other testaments as to the disposal of his considerable fortune. When Seth Hubbard, twice-divorced, estranged from his children and riddled with cancer, publicly hangs himself from a stately sycamore tree on his property line, no one expects the brouhaha that follows-not the sheriff, Ozzie Walls, not coroner Finn Plunkett, not even the story-seeking reporter for the Ford County Times, Dumas Lee.

Certainly nothing has changed for Lucien-disbarred, retired, but planning to get his act together soon and take another run at the Bar Exam.Ĭontent in his plush office digs but concerned about his financial state, Jake has no idea that a wealthy man’s well-planned suicide will put him center stage in another roiling drama in a Ford County courtroom. Just a few years later, Jack is enjoying the lush offices loaned to him by Lucien Wilbanks, the barrister who came to Jake’s rescue despite the impediment of the alcoholic haze in which he normally functions. Grisham returns for another run with his popular character Jake Brigance ( A Time to Kill) of Ford County, Mississippi, best known for a racially-charged trial that left his home burnt to the ground, his family near-penniless, and his reputation forever ensconced in high drama on behalf of an innocent man. Book review: John Grisham's *Sycamore Row*

Sycamore row review