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A hot-button legal case fuels a community’s smoldering hostility—but the dark secret at its heart could set the town ablaze.
Public defender Julia Geary moves through life in simmering resentment—at her husband, a soldier killed in Iraq, leaving her a single mother; at her low-paying job; and at her overbearing mother-in law, whose home she shares. She longs for a breakout case, and it arrives when members of the high school soccer team report seeing a teammate—Iraqi refugee Sami Mohammed—assaulting a girl in the locker room.
In a town where animosity against refugees has already reached a fever pitch, Julia throws all her energy into Sami's defense. She finds an ally in high school principal Dom Parrish, who believes Sami is innocent, and the case suddenly turns red hot.
Then she begins receiving vicious threats against her family, and a senseless act of violence leaves Sami in a coma. And finally, a crop of new evidence emerges that points to the town's most prominent citizens and pits Julia against powerful forces set on burying the truth once and for all.
If Sami survives and Julia can prove him innocent, it will be the case of a lifetime. But now it's her life that's on the line.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
August 10, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781643858586
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781643858586
- File size: 971 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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June 1, 2021
A beleaguered defense attorney catches a case from hell. Julia Geary is an Iraq War widow. Although she has a job as a public defender, it doesn't pay much, so she and her toddler son, Calvin, live with her mother-in-law, Beverly Sullivan, a former farm girl who prides herself on having earned a place among Duck Creek's elite. Beverly seems to blame Julia for her son's death even though enlisting was Michael's idea, not his wife's. And Julia's widowhood is a mixed bag. It makes Chief Public Defender Bill Decker loath to lay her off when times are tough, but it lands her a case no one wants: defending Muslim immigrant Sami Mohammed, a high school senior accused of raping classmate Ana Olsen during soccer practice. Once news gets out that Julia's defending Sami, her life swiftly tanks. Her personal information is spread over social media, leading angry neighbors to protest outside her house. Her son is thrown out of preschool, leaving Grandma Beverly, shunned by her bridge club, to babysit. Sami won't tell her anything, and Ana claims it was too dark to see her assailant. Although much of Julia's tale is a boilerplate litany of assaults on the righteous by the self-righteous, Florio invests her characters with enough humanity, along with touches of humility, to make it worth the read. In the end, justice is done.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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