Customer Reviews

Scorched Earth

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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Everyone in the county seemed to like Clare and Elijah Waddell, or at least treat them politely; but when the interracial couple's infant is buried in the all-white Victory Baptist Church cemetery, seemingly good people react out of hate. In the story that follows, David L. Robbins weaves an intricate tale of intrigue that I found so difficult to put down that I read all 300+ pages in two sittings. Robbins manages to paint such a descriptive picture of the town and it's people that the reader feels like a part of the story; yet the story moves quickly and every word holds the reader's attention.

This is the first book I have read by Robbins but it will certainly not be the last!

When you start this book, you know it is going to be well written, but you sure don't know how it is going to turn out. Robbins mixes race - a mixed race couple - with crime, a sympathetic lawyer, forensic science, a troubled priest and small town politics - sexual and other. It is more than a "legal thriller;" it's the story of people caught in their peculiar enviornment in a time of crisis and how they react. I really enjoyed the book, and there's an interesting legal twist at the end. Read it.

David L. Robbins can flat-out write! Why he is not better known and does not have a larger following is even more of a mystery to me than the excellent mystery he has written in Scorched Earth. Scorched Earth is a story of crime and punishment in a small town in Virginia that is part mystery and part legal thriller. If you like Scott Turow's books you'll love Scorched Earth, as it surpasses the best of his efforts. Robbins' narrative and descriptive powers lay bare the potential of the human heart to hate and, eventually, to heal. While not a fast-moving book, Robbins has developed such strong, powerful and realistic characters that you feel every emotion each character experiences, which range the gamut from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. In many ways, Scorched Earth reminds me of another excellent book, Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. But Robbins goes well beyond introducing you to a range of deeply moving characters, his plot will keep you guessing right until the very end -- even though you'll probably think, as I did, that you 'know who did what to who' half way through the book. I highly recommend Scorched Earth to you when you are in the mood for a very well-written, realistic, at times gut-wrenching mystery that will touch you on many levels. Be warned, though, that this is not the book to sit down with if you're in the mood for a fast-read, "mind candy" type of book. Enjoy!

The venue for SCORCHED EARTH is Good Hope, Virginia, where blue-collar mill workers Elijah and Clara Waddell endure the anguish of parenting a deformed baby girl, Nora, an infant so handicapped that she dies in her mother's arms in the hospital delivery suite. The child is quickly put to rest in the cemetery of the Victory Baptist Church in the plot of Clara's maternal family line. But, there's a problem. For over two-hundred years, the congregation has been exclusively white. Nora is of mixed race, Elijah being Black and Clara Caucasian. Victory Baptist's thirteen deacon's subsequently vote, over the objections of the young pastor, the spiritually tortured Thomas Derby, to have the child exhumed and re-buried in the cemetery of the town's Baptist church for Blacks. The night after the exhumation, Victory Baptist is burned to the ground, and Elijah is arrested on-site for arson. Nat Deeds, a former county prosecutor who quit his job and fled Good Hope after his wife admitted to sleeping with another man, and who's now struggling to set up a private law practice in nearby Richmond, is pressured by the presiding judge to return to his birthplace and defend Elijah, who adamantly insists on his innocence. Deeds must now go up against his old boss, the posturing Ed Fentress, who's prosecuting for the commonwealth with the next election in mind. Nat hasn't a shred of a case, and it gets worse when the body of Amanda Talley, the teenage daughter of the county sheriff, is found in the burned rubble of the church. Amanda had apparently been raped, then burned in the fire.

I believed Elijah when he claimed to be innocent. Indeed, I immediately knew who did it. And, for a few pages near the end, it appeared I was right. Pretty darn smug I was, too. At that point, I would've extolled SCORCHED EARTH not as a mystery, but as story of three childhood acquaintances - Deeds, Derby, and Talley - grappling with personal demons. But a final plot twist at the end caught me completely broadside and made me feel the fool. I guess I should read more.

Robbin's has a flair for descriptive writing and an understanding of humanity. As an example:

"Mayhem is the by-product of civilization ... It's the effluent of good intentions, loyalties, contracts, desires, and love ... The quietest of us, the simplest of us ... is a keg. A fuse burns inside everyone. What is different in each man and woman is only the length of the fuse."

Robbins has previously written two superb novels of World War Two: WAR OF THE RATS and THE END OF WAR. Focusing on a vastly different milieu, SCORCHED EARTH is as good, or better, as anything John Grisham has written about local politics, race, and justice in the Old South. I can't recommend this book too highly.

A friend recommended this book, or I never would have discovered it. I'm so glad I did. A bi-racial baby dies ten minutes after her birth, and she is buried in the cemetary of the white church, which her mother's family has attended for generations. The deacons of the church decide to exhume her body and have the family bury her in the black cemetary down the road. That night the white church burns under mysterious circumstances. Did Elijah, the black father, burn it--along with the young woman inside? The rest of the book is a legal battle to determine who
the arsonist/murderer really is. The book was fascinating, and the writing was poetic at times. There were unexpected twists and turns to the ending. It is exactly the kind of book that makes a very satisfying read for me.

David L. Robbins has proven himself an accomplished writer of historical fiction with his two previous books, "The War Of The Rats and The End Of War". To the benefit of readers he has created a new novel based upon his imagination and the skill to render his thoughts into print. Historical Fiction provides some basis with which to work, some authors utilize history with great skill borrowing truths without using them as crutches for a weak imagination, limited creative thought. Mr. Robbins has shown he is amongst those who can compile original stories shuffled with facts and produce engaging work. With this novel, "Scorched Earth", he demonstrates he can create a unique tale in a place and time of his choosing.

Taken one at a time racism or religion can provide enough emotion to destroy any person or group. Either of these can, and has, literally changed the course of our history. The author has placed both of these volatile beliefs together and further compounded the conflict with The Law, which has yet to become blind to color, and the Press that too often seems to jettison humanity and justify their actions with the thinnest of rationales, the public's right to know. Add to these issues a host of all too common failings in personal relationships and you have an intricate tale, a complex enigma, that even with its end leaves room for interpretation and further thought that lasts well beyond the final page.

A married couple has a child after months of normal worry and concern, their only desire is that their child be healthy. A little girl is born and has a life measured in only minutes, a time so brief there is barely time to absorb her infirmity before she is gone. The child lives long enough to be given the name Nora Carol, and then is laid to rest in a church graveyard where her grandmother with whom she shares her name is a church leader and elder. The child has no rest, for her grandmother is white, her mother is white, but her father is black, and that is enough to make this child unwelcome. The church elders agree without exception, and the child is taken from her grave so rapidly and without any sensitivity a person would have to believe some plague was buried there, not a child.

With nothing more than tradition to mask their racist beliefs the community starts a series of events that lead to their church burning to the ground, an apparent murder, and a rush to judgment fueled by the same ignorance that violated a child's grave. Jim Crow thinking adds crimes without basis; the District Attorney adds charges no more founded in fact than the accusations they are based on in a quest for a capital crime conviction. A conviction that would bring death to one man as it embellishes the resume of another.

The book is filled with people and their personal demons, secrets that they will do almost anything to hide. And while my description may appear a familiar one, the author's tale is meticulously constructed, a maze of false leads and misdirection. And when the end arrives more will be revealed than any list you compile as you read.

A key to the solution of one mystery is something that could be easily dismissed as unlikely at best, or even impossible. But where else can the unexplained be accepted, where can the miraculous occur, if not on Holy Ground then where?

An excellent work by an author willing to step away from what has worked before, to expand his skill to another genre, and to do so brilliantly.

A mystery that is set inside the ethics of racial prejudice and matters of personal decision while presenting a true mystery with turns and surprises is surely a rare find. David Robbins accomplished this for us in a very compelling novel. It quickly envelops the reader in the strong emotions of fairness, learned prejudice, and the power of damaged lives. The wording, the turn of a phrase, the style of writing, the candid language moves us to the place and time, to the people and their lives, into the Deep South and into our own questions about right and wrong. With whom will you agree, takes sides, make allowances for their grieving and their anger? And yet this is a mystery, a pager turner that is entertaining and thoughtful without leaving you with a "hot-foot". Don't expect Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes. Expect the characters to unfold the story; expect characters who live and breathe with their strengths and flaws - like us.

David L. Robbins practices what he teaches. 'Economy of words, write lean'. He is a master of words. I purchased Scorched Earth after reading three of his Historical Fiction WWII novels, The End of War, War of the Rats and Liberation Road. I was pleasantly surprised by the change of venue and a totally different voice. His words dig deep into your soul and uncover suppressed racial bigotry and petty bias not limited to Small Town, USA.

His ability to create contrasting works of fiction in different genres brings to mind authors like Larry McMurtry, Kyle Mills and James Patterson.

Robbins talent will soon bring his name to the forefront of discussions by people who love good writing.

A mixed couple's baby is refused burial in a white cemetery; when that church is burned down, the black father is blamed. The plot thickens with lots of twists and turns that get increasingly interesting. With extremely painful and sensitive situations being delt with, there is a lot here to absorb. I didn't like the characters or the writing in the beginning of the story...thought they were stereotypical and it was a little sappy, but surprisingly, that seemed to really turn around about 1/3 to 1/2 into the book., with the writing enjoyable and real, and the characters believable, well rounded, and interesting. From being tempted to put the book down early on, I ended up caring very much about the characters and their fates and enjoying the story thoroughly.

Scorched Earth is a powerful novel. Robbins's lean, sometimes poetic writing style propels the story forward at a page-turning pace. The book's theme is important -- the degree to which racism spreads its poison from birth to death in a contemporary working-class community in the American south. Once I began reading this book, I was totally absorbed and couldn't put it down.