I enjoy a legal thriller as much as the next person and it had been a while since I’d read a GOOD courtroom drama, and this book delivered just that. A compulsive legal thriller, which was very hard to not finish in one sitting. There was an air of mystery and intrigue from the beginning. Defending Jacob is a story about the Barber family dealing with the nightmare their normal life had become and couldn’t seem to wake up from. A microscopic look into a family dealing with theirs son's murder trail.
Andy Barber, the Assistant District Attorney is called in when a 14 year old boy is found dead in the park, in a pool of blood around him. Even though the boy went to school with his son, Andy had no reason to question the students, let alone his son. He was pursuing other leads that came to light. Couple of days in the investigation, the DA confronts Andy with some new evidence that is brought to their notice by some of the students. Hard evidence involving his son, Jacob. Stunned, as Andy rushes home to get to his wife and son, he finds a crew of cops waiting outside his house with a warrant.
“We need to be very careful about locking people up for what they are rather than what they do.”
Landay captures their struggles to get through their daily tasks is both amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. He really gets into their minds and draws out their distressed thoughts and emotions so well. You could almost feel what this family was going through everyday. How mundane tasks like buying groceries or their family dinners and conversations had changed through this whole process. How the society’s reaction to the trial forced them to alter their routines and cut them off from everyone. He imposes these dreadful questions on the parents, which only forces them to see their child in a whole new light. Yet, Not even for a moment did Andy believe their son could have committed such a monstrous crime, they stood by him like two pillars on either side the entire time, ignoring the allegations and the rumours, just defending their son.
"At some point as adults we cease to be our parents’ children and we become our children’s parents instead.”
I loved everything about this book. The narration of the trial and the nuanced details were captured so beautifully. The unique way the story was conceptualised and eventually portrayed and how it all unfolds in the end, left me in complete shock. Even though I saw a couple things coming through the course of the book I did not anticipate the ending it had! The entire story of this family was so brilliantly told that it was hard not to get sucked in and be a part of this family’s struggles and just hoping for a happy ending they all deserved.
“Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you.”