The Summons

Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He’s forty-three, newly

single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother,

Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family’s black sheep. And he has a father, a very

sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known

to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and

politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee

mansion and become a recluse. With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for

both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the

Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and

Forrest to appear in his study. Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place

where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take

place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known

only to Ray. And perhaps someone else.

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