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Love Is the Motive

 This is maybe not strictly new--it came out toward the end of 2018--but it's newish. 

The "young adult" version of "Just Mercy" has Bryan Stevenson graduating from Harvard and heading off to Alabama. An incident occurred in Bryan's past. In his mid-eighties, Bryan's grandfather found himself the victim of a robbery. Some kids wanted to steal a TV. But--truly senseless--the kids also murdered Bryan's grandfather. An 85-ish guy! What could this grandfather threaten the kids with? What danger did he represent?

Fueled by anger and wonder, Bryan sets out to heal the world. He stumbles on one terrible case after another. A man--clearly innocent--gets saddled with a murder charge; he is on his way to death-by-court-ruling. When Stevenson provides compelling evidence that witnesses have lied, it would seem that reasonable doubt is on the table. But racism leads to further delays, and delays, and delays.

Elsewhere, Bryan discovers that children can sometimes become victims of capital punishment. It often doesn't matter if these children themselves have been victims of horrific abuse. Other children are sentenced to life imprisonment--craftily, Bryan calls this fate "a sentence to die in prison"--just for being present at chaotic moments, moments when premeditation is clearly not a factor.

Finally, Bryan gets on the phone to inform one client that all efforts have failed; within an hour, this client will die. As he works through this impossible phone call, Bryan thinks about how each and every one of us is broken. We have a choice. We can admit to being broken, and do the best we can. Or we can pretend to be superheroic--and we can channel our rage into unjust punishments for people who are less superficially powerful than we are.

Strong stuff for a teen reader! I recommend this "young adult" edition because YA is *always* the way to go. Teens are harsh critics; they will not tolerate five hundred pages about threshing. If someone has written a YA edition of an earlier book, it means that the new edition will be tighter, quicker, more gripping than the original.

Stevenson is writing a memoir--but the work also has a "parable" quality. Like any smart lawyer, Stevenson is a skilled storyteller; he dwells on the unforgettable details. The racist prison-worker who finds himself moved by a story of brutality-in-foster-care; "I had that childhood, too," the worker says, before changing his ways. The guy in prison who just really, really wants a chocolate milkshake. The captive who is so moved by a visit from a photographer, he writes to say that the photos are the things he wants most in the world (right behind a release from prison). "I have a dollar....I can send you fifty cents later.....How many of those photos could I buy?"

Believe the hype. I'm a bit late to the "Just Mercy" booster club. Five stars.
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