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 No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee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.


Chapter 1
It came by mail, regular postage, the old-fashioned way since the Judge was almost
eighty and distrusted modern devices. Forget e-mail and even faxes. He didn't use an
answering machine and had never been fond of the telephone. He pecked out his letters
with both index fingers, one feeble key at a time, hunched over his old Underwood
manual on a rolltop desk under the portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Judge's
grandfather had fought with Forrest at Shiloh and throughout the Deep South, and to him
no figure in history was more revered. For thirty-two years, the Judge had quietly refused
to hold court on July 13, Forrest's birthday.
It came with another letter, a magazine, and two invoices, and was routinely placed in the
law school mailbox of Professor Ray Atlee. He recognized it immediately since such
envelopes had been a part of his life for as long as he could remember. It was from his
lather, a man he too called the Judge.
THE SUMMONS
by John Grisham
Professor Atlee studied the envelope, uncertain whether he should open it right there or
wait a moment. Good news or bad, he never knew with the Judge, though the old man
was dying and good news had been rare. It was thin and appeared to contain only one
sheet of paper; nothing unusual about that. The Judge was frugal with the written word,
though he'd once been known for his windy lectures from the bench.
It was a business letter, that much was certain. The Judge was not one for small talk,
hated gossip and idle chitchat, whether written or spoken. Ice tea with him on the porch
would be a refighting of the Civil War, probably at Shiloh, where he would once again
lay all blame for the Confederate defeat at the shiny, untouched boots of General Pierre G.
T. Beauregard, a man he would hate even in heaven, if by chance they met there.
He'd be dead soon. Seventy-nine years old with cancer in his stomach. He was
overweight, a diabetic, a heavy pipe smoker, had a bad heart that had survived three
attacks, and a host of lesser ailments that had tormented him for twenty years and were
now finally closing in for the kill. The pain was constant. During their last phone call
three weeks earlier, a call initiated by Ray because the Judge thought long distance was a
rip-off, the old man sounded weak and strained. They had talked for less than two
minutes.
The return address was gold-embossed: Chancellor Reuben V Atlee, 25th Chancery
District, Ford County Courthouse, Clanton, Mississippi. Ray slid the envelope into the
magazine and began walking. Judge Atlee no longer held the office of chancellor. The
voters had retired him nine years earlier, a bitter defeat from which he would never
recover. Thirty-two years of diligent service to his people, and they tossed him out in
favor of a younger man with radio and television ads. The Judge had refused to campaign.
He claimed he had too much work to do, and, more important, the people knew him well
and if they wanted to reelect him then they would do so. His strategy had seemed
arrogant to many. He carried Ford County but got shellacked in the other five.
It took three years to get him out of the courthouse. His office on the second floor had
survived a fire and had missed two renovations. The Judge had not allowed them to touch
it with paint or hammers. When the county supervisors finally convinced him that he had