A Time to Stand, by Robert Whitlow

Robert Whitlow is a practicing lawyer and a veteran writer of legal fiction.  I enjoy the genre, so I thought I'd pick up A Time to Stand.  Whitlow has been called Christian publishing's version of John Grisham, so it's probably no accident that Whitlow's novel about a race-fueled conflict in the South echoes Grisham's novel A Time to Kill.  I've read a lot of Grisham, and Whitlow compares favorably in style and skill.

Whitlow displays the great story-telling chops that it takes to make enjoyable legal fiction.  The main character, Adisa Johnson, is a corporate lawyer in Atlanta, on her way up the legal career ladder.  She returns to her tiny hometown to visit her aunt and ends up sticking around.  A local lawyer, for whom she had worked as an intern many years earlier, asks her to help him with a case.  His firm is representing a white police officer who shot an unarmed black teenager.  Adisa, who is black, is torn between her convictions about black-on-white police violence and racism, and her desire to pursue justice and honor the law.  Under conviction from God, but to the consternation of the entire black community, she chooses to work on the case.

Things become more complicated when she becomes romantically involved with a local pastor who is a leader of the movement to prosecute the police officer.  Adisa struggles with her own race-based predispositions, while the community at large comes to terms with racial tension that few were aware had been swirling under the surface in the peaceful town.  Whitlow is, of course, pulling this story straight from the headlines.  He strikes an insightful balance between the attitudes of the black community and the white community, avoiding the extremes of the violent groups, black and white, that have poured gasoline on simmering racial fires in recent days.  Adisa's wise aunt Josie voices Whitlow's take on the matter: "The kind of love that removes bricks in the wall of prejudice only comes from above.  Anything else is like a Band-Aid on cancer."  Later on, the pastor preaches that "there is only one definitive, all-encompassing answer to what divides us, isolates us, and causes us to mistrust--transformation of the human heart through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Whitlow avoids lecturing about race and racism while telling a thoroughly enjoyable and believable tale.  Yes, it's fiction, but I felt like the dialogue, the courtroom scenes, and the church scenes were well-written and realistic.  I do wonder how authentic A Time to Stand would seem to black readers.  Robert Whitlow is a white male, well into his legal career.  Adisa is a black female on the early end of hers.  Beyond that basic issue, I wonder how a black activist would relate to Whitlow's presentation.  To me (also white), it seemed balanced and realistic.  I'm just very curious what a black person would think. . . .  Personally, I'm with Whitlow.  No matter the details and circumstances, blacks and whites need to shed their pasts and prejudices and come together in love, and the best--perhaps the only--way for that to take place is through the power of Jesus.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!