Sycamore Row is a legal thriller novel by American author John Grisham published by Doubleday on October 22, 2013. The novel reached the top spot in the US best-seller list. It is preceded by A Time to Kill and followed by A Time for Mercy.
Plot
The title refers to a row of sycamore trees in the countryside near the fictional town of Clanton, in fictional Ford County, Mississippi. The trees play an important role in the book's plot, though the full significance becomes clear only in the end of the novel. It is suggested that these sycamores are very old, having been planted by Native Americans prior to the arrival of European settlers and their stolen, enslaved Africans in what would become the state of Mississippi.
The story begins three years after the sensational events in the trial of Carl Lee Hailey (A Time to Kill). An employee of wealthy recluse Seth Hubbard is instructed to meet his boss at a location by these sycamores one early Sunday afternoon. The employee finds Mr. Hubbard has hanged himself from the tree because his terminal lung cancer had become too painful. Accompanying the body are very specific funeral and burial instructions.
Jake Brigance, Carl Lee's former attorney, had gained much fame after the Hailey trial, as well as the respect of the black community and of many whites, but he has little to no money to show for it. During the Hailey trial, the Ku Klux Klan had tried to intimidate Jake by burning his home. Jake has yet to see any of the insurance money for the burnt house, which is tied up in litigation with his own insurance company.
Jake receives a letter sent by Hubbard just before he killed himself, containing a new holographic will that renounces a will he filed the year before in which he leaves all his assets to his daughter and son as well as his grandchildren. In this new will, Hubbard stipulates that his children will receive nothing. Instead, five percent will be given to the local church and another five percent will be left to his long-disappeared brother, Ancil Hubbard. The remaining ninety percent is to be given to his black housekeeper Letitia "Lettie" Lang. Further instructions stipulate that the will must not be filed for probate until after Hubbard's funeral so that his children, who rarely visited him during his bout with cancer, can put on a show not knowing that they will ultimately be left with nothing.
Hubbard notes that his children will certainly contest the new will because they are greedy and that Jake must do whatever it takes to make sure the new will is enforced. He says he chose Jake because of the admirable work that Jake did during the Hailey trial.
Soon, Jake finds out that Hubbard had earned more than $20 million in a lumber yard business, a fortune unmatched by any other individual in Ford County. As the executor publishes this sum, the entire town of Clanton shifts their attention to the case.
Hubbard's children attempt to contest their father's new will by claiming he was not capable when filing it, igniting a hotly contested court battle with many twists and turns. Jake's first concern is to prevent the trial from becoming a race issue of blacks vs. whites. Since Ford County has a white majority, the jury would almost certainly also be majority white. On the other hand, whites in Ford County are far from completely biased, as proven by the fact that voters had elected a black sheriff to two consecutive terms by an overwhelming majority. Jake believes that if the race issue is toned down, the jury might rule for Lettie on the case's own merits, i.e. that Hubbard made his money himself and had the right to leave it to whoever he wanted and that he knew what he was doing when changing his will.
First, Jake must get rid of a rabble-rousing black lawyer from Memphis who goes to Clanton and involves himself in the case while engaging in a series of provocative acts which risk the chances of winning the case. Then, Lettie's husband, with whom she is on bad terms, kills two teens while driving drunk, arousing great passions against the Lang family and hurting their chance of a fair trial. As a measure of damage control, Jake convinces Lettie to immediately file for divorce (which was on her mind anyway).