Alex Cross's Trial by James Patterson & Richard Dilallo

Alex Cross has been told the story of his great-uncle Abraham and his struggles for freedom in the era of the Ku Klux Klan. Now he has written this book to document the case for his children.

Ben Corbett represents tough cases in Washington, DC, and he is asked by President Theodore Roosevelt to look into the rumors coming out of Eudora, Mississippi (Ben's hometown) about negroes being lynched. (Ben Corbett is white.)

He leaves his family behind in DC, and goes home. Initially, everyone is very nice to him and he's happy to be back home with friends and family. His father is cold and has no desire to see him, but he's actually relieved about that. He had already taken a room at the local hotel.

He visits Abraham Cross and meets his beautiful granddaughter, Moody. And as Abraham takes him around to show him where black men have been lynched, he is at first almost unbelieving. But as he watches the interaction between whites and blacks in town, he starts to see the seeds of hatred in the white men. They try to explain their position by saying the freed black man will take their jobs away. But it's more than that - they find a black person "worthless". That fact leads to dreadful acts.

Not only does Ben witness lynching himself, he actually becomes the victim of one because he's a nigger lover! He barely survives, and Aunt Henry (Henrietta) nurses him back to health at Abraham's cabin.

As he tries to protect Abraham from the Ku Klux Klan, he finds even capturing the guilty parties and delivering them to the sheriff is no guarantee of justice.

This story depicts very accurately the turmoil and upset that came after negroes were freed. It also shows just how badly the white folk reacted.

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