The Trench and the Conscience - Book Two

I see some of you came back. Good. A few didn't, and I don't blame them.

Book Two of the Pearson Trilogy, and the book about what a man does after he loses.

The last time we met, I buried a case. Thomas Hocutt asked to study pharmacy at a state university and was refused for the color of his skin. He lost because a Black college president would not hand over his transcript. The law I loved could not save him.

Pearson could have gone north. The national office was building itself in New York in those years, with money and a press and the famous men. Houston was there. Marshall would soon be there. A man with Pearson's gifts could have walked onto that stage and never looked back.

He could also have quit. Most men who lose the way Pearson lost do neither. They go quiet. They take the deeds and the wills, and the safe, small work, and not one soul would call them cowards for it.

He stayed in Durham and went back to work. Teacher pay equalization, county by county, courtroom by courtroom. A brave client. A teacher's wage. The branch. The appeal north. Thirty-three chapters of the unglamorous grinding that the record does not celebrate and the victories were built on.

For the ones who were turned away and were right.

Historical fiction anchored to the documented record. Follows The Hocutt Catalyst. Concludes in The Reckoning. The story begins in The Wrong Direction, a prequel, free in this store.

Delivered as EPUB. No DRM.