“A Calamity of Souls” by David Baldacci: Not just Another Legal Thriller https://ift.tt/qerIvhF
In 1968, Freeman County, Virginia, lawyer Jack Lee takes the legal leap of a lifetime by choosing to represent a Black man named Jerome Washington after Jerome is accused of murdering two members of a prominent white family. Jack finds himself in a dramatic, politically charged whirlwind, and as community members turn against him and his family, Jack must choose between standing for what is right and just or capitulating to Freeman County’s inherent racism. Jack’s situation changes when Desiree DuBose, a talented Black lawyer from Chicago known for her legal prowess, arrives in Freeman County. Desiree and Jack decide to co-represent Jerome Washington, a decision that has the future to not only shape the two lawyers’ professional careers but also to challenge a commonwealth and a community determined to convict an innocent man simply because he is Black. In David Baldacci’s A Calamity of Souls, Virginia’s legacy as a hotbed of racism where the Confederacy never truly died is dissected and examined, and America’s longstanding tradition of racial oppression is placed under a legal microscope in Baldacci’s fictional account of one innocent man and his legal team’s fight for fair and just representation.
What makes Baldacci’s latest legal thriller disconcerting is how it quietly unveils how white America has questioned and even resisted diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for decades. The novel is set during a progressive yet tumultuous year in Civil Rights history: 1968. During this year, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the Black Power Movement emerged, and the Civil Rights Act was passed. Following Dr. King’s assassination, riots erupted across the nation, and the Virginians in Baldacci’s novel — with the exception of progressives like Jack Lee — do not view the protests and riots positively. Baldacci reveals the effects a community steeped in Southern Tradition and post-Confederacy denial about the South’s legacy can have on people of color and how that past can cause present-day issues regarding integration. Desiree DuBose, the novel’s inspiring, successful Black lawyer from Chicago, faces death threats, physical abuse, and harassment in Virginia as she and Jack defend Jerome Washington. She stands in sharp contrast to the novel’s white supremacist characters, and she embodies the powerful, determined spirit of the Black community at the time. Numerous characters in Baldacci’s novel – most notably the sheriff’s deputies and even the court clerk–emphasize that Blacks and whites should remain separate. Thus, the struggle between the Old South and a new, progressive, and racially integrated America is what centers A Calamity of Souls.
The novel’s main character, Jack Lee, is a born and raised Virginian who hails from Freeman County and is well-known in his community. Jack recognizes he is one of the few in his community who actually supports the federal government’s Civil Rights initiatives. Nonetheless, he must also confront his white privilege. It is not until the arrival of and his work with Desiree DuBose that Jack truly acknowledges how his white privilege, particularly in a state like Virginia, allowed him to achieve a quality education and decent lifestyle. His foil is verbose, proudly Southern Edmond Battle, an attorney sent from Richmond to represent the commonwealth against Jerome Washington. Battle’s arrival on the scene and his involvement in the case as the commonwealth’s representative is significant because, as the commonwealth’s representative, Battle is determined to prove Jerome Washington is guilty—no matter what evidence might prove otherwise. Battle, as a character, is a representation of the power and privilege white wealth played in Virginian politics. Paralleling Battle’s character is Judge Ambrose, a man who — like many southern politicians, lawyers, and high-ranking officials of the time — once belonged to and supported the Ku Klux Klan.
Of course, Baldacci’s characters like Battle and Ambrose are emblematic of people who could easily have served in state and national offices. Characters such as Battle bring to mind real-life politicians like former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and Louisiana state representative David Duke. Duke is a well-known neo-Nazi whose belief in conspiracy theories and white supremacist ideals greatly influence his politics. Others, like Judge Ambrose, evoke the image of West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd. Byrd started his political career by serving as an Exalted Cyclops in the KKK. More so, the novel’s portrayal of Civil Rights era right-wing rhetoric seems to mirror President Donald Trump’s current racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric, as well as the anti-DEI policies he made official on his first day in office.
One of the most psychologically challenging and frightening fronts Baldacci dares to explore in A Calamity of Souls is how everyday people can be brainwashed by racist and anti-immigrant propaganda and how quickly one’s neighbors can turn against people like Jack Lee, who takes up the legal sword against injustice. Thus, A Calamity of Souls is even more relevant to America’s current, heated socio-political situation because it shows that in the nearly six decades since the Civil Rights movement, the Klan’s and neo-Nazi rhetoric unfortunately still influence today’s political scenes and candidates.
What A Calamity of Souls also reveals about American society is its seemingly impossible-to-overcome obsession with violence. The sheriff’s deputies in Baldacci’s novel will use any means to reinforce racial oppression, not only against Black people whom they falsely accuse but also against those individuals like Jack Lee and Desiree DuBose — and even Jack’s family. Similarly to Laura Leigh Morris’s The Stone Catchers, A Calamity of Souls explores the generational perpetuation of violent ideals in America, one that enforces the idea that firearms — and an individual’s right to carry and use one—are means to solve a community’s problems. The sheriff’s deputies also represent a larger societal problem that America has yet to confront — police brutality. In its investigation of the Ku Klux Klan’s overall influence and power in the American legal and political systems, A Calamity of Souls parallels works like Mark Brazaitis’s introspective and necessary 2024 novel, American Seasons. Baldacci’s book examines America’s dangerous, continual flirtation with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, whose presence, along with other alt-right groups, only seems to grow as America teeters on a dangerous, democracy-threatening brink.
A Calamity of Souls is not merely another stereotypical quick-to-read legal thriller. Yes, it is action-packed and gripping, but, more so, it is an uncomfortable reckoning with one of America’s darkest periods and the ideologies America as a whole seems too reluctant to leave behind.
FICTION A Calamity of Souls By David Baldacci
Grand Central Publishing
Published April 16, 2024
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