El señor
Atlee, un hombre mayor y muy enfermo, vive solo en la casa familiar de
Clanton, Mississippi. Había sido un juez temido y apreciado que había estado
por encima de la ley y la política local durante cuarenta años.
Ahora casi se
ha vuelto un recluso. Al ver de cerca su fin, el juez Atlee manda llamar a su
hijo Ray, un profesor de Derecho en la Universidad de Virginia, para acordar
los detalles de la herencia. Su hijo se encamina, reticente, hacia el sur,
pero el encuentro familiar no tiene lugar. El juez muere demasiado pronto. Y
con ello, deja tras de sí un secreto sorprendente que solo llega a conocer
Ray.
Y quizá alguien más.
ENGLISH
DESCRIPTION
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longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become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.