The Final Case

Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars) returns to a courtroom drama with this new release. The unnamed narrator’s father receives an assignment to defend Betsy Harvey when she and her husband Delvin are accused of homicide by abuse of their adopted Ethiopian daughter, Abeba “Abigail” Addisu. Since the narrator is between writing assignments and battling writer’s block, he agrees to chauffeur his father Royal, a semiretired lawyer, to and from the various court proceedings. Betsy and Delvin, both white, are showcased through their fundamentalist Christian and conservative political beliefs. Short testimony from the Harveys’ other adopted children is included, but provides no real clarity. Once the details of Abeba’s life in Ethiopia are finally presented, they read like a laundry list of calamities, which dulls any empathy readers might feel. Royal is unable to finish arguing the case, and once he exits the story, the novel disintegrates. The narrator’s musings are the strength of this title, but they obscure any profound reckoning that readers are supposed have; John Grisham’s A Time To Kill or Christine Pride and Jo Piazza’s We Are Not Like Them are better choices for that experience.