** spoiler alert ** I love this book... it shows so starkly the fight against racism in the small town South. You can't help but feel the justice in a man taking the law into his own hands... because the law has failed him. And because of that, it forces you to confront your own beliefs, your own morals... you have to question the sanctity of the law and what you're willing to put your faith in. It brings up the issues of right and wrong in a way that's almost horrifying in its use of grey area.

And it's got one of my favorite parts that I've ever read in any book anywhere, that sticks with me years later... at the end of the trial when the main character asks the jury to picture the horrifying abuse and degradation and injuries that the little black girl was subject to... and then to imagine that she's white. It's almost like a physical blow and it's stuck with me ever since.

Heck, it's how I picked my candidate for the Democratic primaries... lines up their resumes and their plans and looked at them and went, "OK... now what if they were both white men?"

This book changed the way I look at the world, with that one simple sentence.