<p>The story of Foster Beck the author's late father whose defense of a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama foreshadowed the trial at the heart of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>.</p><p>As a child Joseph Beck heard the stories - when other lawyers came up with excuses his father courageously defended a black man charged with raping a white woman. </p><p>Now a lawyer himself Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White Alias a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old. </p><p>On the day of Foster Beck's client's arrest the leading local newspaper reported under a page-one headline that 'a wandering negro fortune teller giving the name Charles White' had 'volunteered a detailed confession of the attack' of a local white girl. However Foster Beck concluded that the confession was coerced. The same article claimed that 'the negro accomplished his dastardly purpose' but as in To Kill a Mockingbird there was evidence at the trial to the contrary. Throughout the proceedings the defendant had to be escorted from the courthouse to a distant prison 'for safekeeping' and the courthouse itself was surrounded by a detachment of 16 Alabama highway patrolmen. </p><p>The saga captivated the community with its dramatic testimonies and emotional outcome. It would take an immense toll on those involved including Foster Beck who worried that his reputation had cast a shadow over his lively intelligent and supportive fiancé Bertha who had her own social battles to fight. </p><p>This riveting memoir steeped in time and place seeks to understand how race relations class and the memory of southern defeat in the Civil War produced such a haunting distortion of justice and how it may figure into our literary imagination.</p>
