I picked this up at the Ramstein Air Base (GERMANY) Library Free Book Exchange shelf primarily for RELEASE!

This book is on the move and will be sent with the movers from Kaiserslautern, Germany to our new location near Washington, D.C.

The movers will take all of our possessions sometime in July or August and we will get access to them again when we get settled and unpacked in our new house in October or November. This book will be marked as traveling until I get the chance to get all my books out on bookshelves and make new journal entries that will change the status to something more suitable.

This book has been unpacked in Waldorf, Maryland.

From the back cover:

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.

Because Troy Phelan;s new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.

Enter the lawyers, Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman - pursued by enemies and friends alike - holds a stunning surprise of her own....

THE TESTAMENT

This is the first John Grisham book that I have read. I must admit that I put off trying one for a long time because I thought that the book would be complicated and perhaps a little wordy and dry. Afterall, this book is in excess of 500 pages. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try and within only a few pages I was starting to get hooked. The writing is easy and quick and I didn't have to wade through any confusing dialogue. In fact, you might say that the book often gets right to the point without lots of fluff. I also liked the way that I could see the characters and the setting without feeling like I was reading pages and pages of author fluff. It is not always important to me the exact details of the scene but more important that I can get an overall picture and form some of the details in my own mind.

I instantly became fascinated by the Phelan heirs and how much of a screwed up bunch that they are. It probably reminds each reader of a spolied brat that they once knew. The travels through Brazil started to get a bit tedious for me but about the time that I would start to get bored the scene would shift back to the excitement of Virginia and the legal battle there.

I generally like court cases (at least on TV) and I enjoyed the fact that this book was definately not all courtroom and that the legal jargon didn't get in the way of how the book reads.

I would recommend this book and must say that I am looking forward to trying out some of the other books that I have sitting in Mount TBR also by this same author. If I like those books I may have to add John Grisham to my list of authors that I will try and read all of their works. So many books and so litle time.

I also wanted to mention something that really caught my eye in this book. On page 480 Nate spends the night in Shawnee, Oklahoma on his trip across country to see his children. I thought this was really neat as I grew up in Tecumseh, OK and Shawnee is the next town over and the place where most of the county goes to shop and take care of most business. As I have been there many, many times I thought that it was really neat to see it in a book that I was reading. I wonder why the author picked that particular on the map?

RELEASE NOTES:

This book was released at the
INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE BOOK
festival in Old Town Kensington.

Welcome to Old Town Kensington's Celebration of the International Day of the Book.

April 23 is a symbolic day in world literature. Declared as International Day of the Book by UNESCO in 1995, this celebration of books and literature draws it's inspiration from a Catalan tradition, the Festival of the Rose.

Legend has it that Saint George, Patron Saint of Catalonia and international knight-errant, slew a dragon about to devour a beautiful Catalan princess. From the dragon's blood sprouted a rosebush, from which the hero plucked the prettiest rose for the princess. Hence the traditional Rose Festival celebrated in Barcelona since the Middle Ages to honor chivalry and love. In 1923, this lover's "festa" became even more poetic when it merged with "el dia del llibre", or The Day of the Book, to mark the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, the two giants of literary history, on April 23, 1616.

On this day in Barcelona, bookstalls and street festivities run the length of the picturesque La Rambla, the old city's main boulevard and, according to the Spanish author Garcia Lorca, "the only street in the world which I wish would never end".

The Town of Kensington, Kensington Literary Group, and the Pauli Bellet Foundation Catalan Library, invite you to celebrate this wonderful day on Howard Ave, our "La Rambla".

We hope that you enjoy the book!

Finally had time to read this book I received at the Kensington Book Festival. I am placing it in my office "library". Let's see where it goes from here.

CAUGHT IN KENSINGTON MD USA