Product Description
The inhabitants of Good Hope, Virginia, haven't felt the cooling effects of rain in weeks. With the town a tinderbox waiting to explode, all it will take is a spark to ignite the rage and hatred so carefully hidden. And then a tragedy occurs. A baby is born and dies in her mother's arms. The child, Nora Carol, is buried quickly and quietly the next day in the churchyard. It should have ended there, but it didn't, for Nora Carol is of mixed race. The white deacons of Good Hope's Victory Baptist Church, trying to protect the centuries-old traditions of their cemetery, have the body exhumed. That night the church is set ablaze, and the sole witness is the only suspect - Elijah, Nora Carol's father. What follows is a legal case that reveals a host of hidden prejudices, incendiary secrets, and ultimately, an act of justice that has nothing to do with the law . . .

Synopsis
The inhabitants of Good Hope, Virginia, haven't felt the cooling effects of rain in weeks. With the town a tinderbox waiting to explode, all it will take is a spark to ignite the rage and hatred so carefully hidden. And then a tragedy occurs. A baby is born and dies in her mother's arms. The child, Nora Carol, is buried quickly and quietly the next day in the churchyard. It should have ended there, but it didn't, for Nora Carol is of mixed race. The white deacons of Good Hope's Victory Baptist Church, trying to protect the centuries-old traditions of their cemetery, have the body exhumed. That night the church is set ablaze, and the sole witness is the only suspect - Elijah, Nora Carol's father. What follows is a legal case that reveals a host of hidden prejudices, incendiary secrets, and ultimately, an act of justice that has nothing to do with the law ...

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews   4 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Twist left egg on my face, 19 Feb 2004 By  Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews       The venue for SCORCHED EARTH is Good Hope, Virginia, where blue-collar mill workers Elijah and Clara Waddell endure the anguish of parenting a deformed baby girl, Nora, an infant so handicapped that she dies in her mother's arms in the hospital delivery suite. The child is quickly put to rest in the cemetery of the Victory Baptist Church in the plot of Clara's maternal family line. But, there's a problem. For over two-hundred years, the congregation has been exclusively white. Nora is of mixed race, Elijah being Black and Clara Caucasian. Victory Baptist's thirteen deacon's subsequently vote, over the objections of the young pastor, the spiritually tortured Thomas Derby, to have the child exhumed and re-buried in the cemetery of the town's Baptist church for Blacks. The night after the exhumation, Victory Baptist is burned to the ground, and Elijah is arrested on-site for arson. Nat Deeds, a former county prosecutor who quit his job and fled Good Hope after his wife admitted to sleeping with another man, and who's now struggling to set up a private law practice in nearby Richmond, is pressured by the presiding judge to return to his birthplace and defend Elijah, who adamantly insists on his innocence. Deeds must now go up against his old boss, the posturing Ed Fentress, who's prosecuting for the commonwealth with the next election in mind. Nat hasn't a shred of a case, and it gets worse when the body of Amanda Talley, the teenage daughter of the county sheriff, is found in the burned rubble of the church. Amanda had apparently been raped, then burned in the fire. I believed Elijah when he claimed to be innocent. Indeed, I immediately knew who did it. And, for a few pages near the end, it appeared I was right. Pretty darn smug I was, too. At that point, I would've extolled SCORCHED EARTH not as a mystery, but as story of three childhood acquaintances - Deeds, Derby, and Talley - grappling with personal demons. But a final plot twist at the end caught me completely broadside and made me feel the fool. I guess I should read more. Robbin's has a flair for descriptive writing and an understanding of humanity. As an example: "Mayhem is the by-product of civilization ... It's the effluent of good intentions, loyalties, contracts, desires, and love ... The quietest of us, the simplest of us ... is a keg. A fuse burns inside everyone. What is different in each man and woman is only the length of the fuse." Robbins has previously written two superb novels of World War Two: WAR OF THE RATS and THE END OF WAR. Focusing on a vastly different milieu, SCORCHED EARTH is as good, or better, as anything John Grisham has written about local politics, race, and justice in the Old South. I can't recommend this book too highly.