Index

1. Twenty Years and a Car Seat on the Table

2. Detour From Sublimity

3. Leap of Faith

4. Handshake on the Tug

5. A Foot in Heaven; A Foot in Hell

6. Take Me Out To the Ballgame

7. Mama Tried and Cried

8. Be Not Afraid

9. Kentucky Boy

10. Excavating the Truth

11. Thanksgiving Without Thanks

12. I wish I Could Remember

13. Everything Changes for a Reason

14. Never Work on Saturday Morning

15. Give It To Mikey

16. Call from the Mountains

17. Bo and the Congressman

18. Life Changed by Circumstance

19. In the Shadow of a Newborn's Joy

20. From the Tree to the River

21. Fourteen Wounds

22. Rutabaga or Studebaker

23. The Easter Mouse

24. Day on Death Row

So It Begins

Twenty Years and a Car Seat on the Table

What am I doing here? I'm looking up at a judge, beet red in his face. He is so enraged, I can’t understand his words. I know why he is mad. My client did not show up for his trial this morning.

I'm in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, for my first trial as the new director of the Public Defender’s office. They hired me a couple of months ago and sent me to the Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia, for intensive training.

They didn’t cover this situation…a raging judge, an absent client.

Watercolors by Marie