{"id":6115,"date":"2017-12-17T10:20:45","date_gmt":"2017-12-17T15:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=6115"},"modified":"2017-12-17T10:20:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T15:20:45","slug":"sycamore-row-by-john-grisham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/17\/sycamore-row-by-john-grisham\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sycamore Row” by John Grisham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dell Mass Market, 2014<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, it has been quite a while since I posted my last book review. My primary excuse is that I have been busy traveling over 10,000 miles. But John Grisham deserves a share of the blame, too. Sycamore Row is long (637 pages in this edition) and it moves slowly.\u00a0 It took me a month to get to the point where it grabbed me at all.<\/p>\n

The story is that of a terminally ill white man who hangs himself.\u00a0 But before committing suicide he wrote, in longhand, a 1-page will leaving 90% of his estate to his black housekeeper.\u00a0 He also wrote 2 pages of instructions to the lawyer of his choice – a local guy named Jake Brigance – in which he stated, in no uncertain terms, that he did not want either of his children to get a penny and that he wanted his holographic will defended at all costs, knowing that it would be challenged.<\/p>\n

There was no question why he would want to disown his children – they were unlikable and were not close to him, even as he spiraled downhill to his death.\u00a0 The real question was why did he leave most of it to a housekeeper that he had known for only 3 years.\u00a0 And that, folks, it mostly what those 600+ pages are about, along with the courtroom circus that ensued.\u00a0 Because the estate was valued at over $24 million, an inheritance that would make the housekeeper not only the richest black person in the county, but one of the richest persons of any race in the county.<\/p>\n

I won’t spoil it for you and the answer is, indeed, a little surprising.\u00a0 But I will fault Grisham for taking too long to get to the point.\u00a0 This would have been a better book if it had been 400 pages.<\/p>\n

5 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dell Mass Market, 2014 Yes, it has been quite a while since I posted my last book review. My primary excuse is that I have been busy traveling over 10,000 miles. But John Grisham deserves a share of the blame, too. Sycamore Row is long (637 pages in this edition) and it moves slowly.\u00a0 It … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-1AD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6118,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions\/6118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}