WOW! I can finally say that as much as I always enjoy reading James Patterson's books that Alex Cross's Trial has to be the best one he's ever written.
This book is about the racism that existed in this country a hundred years ago. It still exists today, but my hope is that everyday it shrinks into the background, and we all realize that everyone is created equally regardless of skin color.
Alex Cross writes this story about a distant relative and the pain and suffering his family endured during the early 1900s in the South. So many people of that time were set against the intermingling of the African-Americans into their society unless they were working for them. This book points out the many problems that existed. The white man was very fearful of the black man taking jobs away from them and looked down on them as second class citizens for many, many years.
Not all white men felt this way though. The lawyer in this book took it upon himself to defend black men and their families. He went south from D.C. to his home town to experience the horrors first hand of the beatings and lynchings. He was appalled by the fact that these were the people he had grown up with, and they were the ones responsible for so many unspeakable acts.
Patterson really hit on a topic this time. I feel like today we, as a society, still struggle with the whole race issue at times, but we have made great strides in alleviating the problem. We still have a long way to go, but I think as each generation becomes more and more tolerant we will achieve the goal of acceptance for everyone.
