100 books like A Fever In The Heartland

I have a hunger for the human stories that hide behind the technical language, historical excursions, and occasionally baffling reasoning of Supreme Court decisions. There are a few legal journalists who excel at showing us these hidden lives; Anthony Lewis of the New York Times was one of these.

This book was his masterpiece, an account of the relationships among impoverished four-time convicted felon Clarence Gideon, his lawyer Abe Fortas (later to be named to the Court), the members of the Warren Court, and the law of American criminal justice. The 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which established that persons facing serious criminal charges must be provided with lawyers, is inspiring reading, but the larger story that Lewis tells us is both more intricate and more moving.

Fifty years ago, a federal judge in Washington State issued a decision that upended the fishing economy and culture of the Pacific Northwest. United States v. Washington, which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, held that treaties between the government and the tribal peoples of that region must be respected and ruled that the tribes had a right to 50% of the annual catch. 

Wilkinson, one of the lawyers who advised and represented the tribal peoples, imbues his account of the lawsuit and its aftermath with Indian values and culture. Importantly, this form of storytelling includes numerous oral histories. They could serve the right reader as a sort of spiritual guide to how to behave when you, a peaceful person, find that your rights are being violated with apparent impunity.

 I love the blend of reporting and remembering in this book, as well as the skill Iversen brings to weaving them together. In 1992, a federal grand jury indicted the management of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver. The grand jury’s two-year investigation into the safety and environmental violations at the plant also produced a detailed and damning report, emphasizing the government’s efforts to cover up the danger that the plant posed to its employees and to people who lived nearby. The latter population included Iversen’s family.

Her childhood home, organized around the need to overlook her father’s alcoholism, drove her and her siblings outdoors into what looked like idyllic, pristine Colorado outer suburbia. There, they wandered about, rode their horses, and swam in the local creeks and lakes. Reading this, I could see some of what was coming. But it still surprises—and enrages.

This highly readable book allows us to hear from one of the actual parties to a Supreme Court case. Jim Obergefell and his co-author, Debbie Cenziper, invite us into the twined lives of Obergefell and his beloved, John Arthur. 

In 2013 Obergefell and Arthur, who was dying painfully from ALS, flew from their home in Ohio to Maryland, where gay marriage was recognized, to exchange vows. But Ohio refused to acknowledge their marriage and would insist that Arthur’s death certificate must describe him as single. As Arthur lay on his deathbed, he and Obergefell contracted with civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein to pursue the lawsuit that would become Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court held that the states must recognize same-sex marriages. Gerhardstein always insisted that every civil rights case starts with a story. This one could melt a heart of stone.

Imagine finding a beautiful dollhouse where its occupants reenact the night of a murder from decades ago…creepy, right? Betty Ren Wright’s The Dollhouse Murders is a unique ghost story where the ghosts communicate their tragic tale through miniature doll versions of themselves.

Its mystery and old family secrets make this book one of my all-time favorites. 

This is the first book in the Valorian Chronicles, and boy, I wish it was a tv series! I like to think of this book as CSI: Paranormal (or Otherworld Crime Unit as it is named in the book). It’s a dash of police procedural in a world much like ours but with vampires, werewolves, and more creatures that live in a society that goes by their own rules. This book is mixed with a dose of sexy chemistry between the leads wrapped in a happily ever after bow. It’s great for those nights where I’m looking for a bit of suspense and mystery with my romance featuring a vampire hero.

I grew up on Santa Cruz Island, and while Floreana Island was visible on the horizon, I only knew it as the place where mysterious things had happened to people. Only when I read this book did I begin to understand. While Europe was preparing for war in the early 1930s, William Beebe’s enchanting book about Galapagos, caused a bizarre set of adventurers to converge on this small island as their chosen Eden. Stranger than fiction, what ensued was a human-made hell instead, that fostered bizarre deaths and disappearances that have remained unexplained to this day. The author uses his scientific background to analyze the known facts and lets the reader fill in the blanks. This book was the basis for the documentary film, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

This National Book Award-winning novel is the story of an unnamed writer negotiating life in a Black skin that pre-empts most people from seeing him as an individual human being. And it has one of the funniest (pee-in-your-pants) first chapters I’ve ever read.

I not only laughed, but I so identified with the writer (and I think most readers will, no matter what your race—that is the genius of this writing), that I lived every moment of this crazy quest to be seen in a world that absolutely refuses to drop its projections.

But ultimately, the person who needs to see this man as a human being, accepting all of his history, hurt, and uniqueness, is the unnamed writer himself. This is a combination of crazy humor and pain.

Financial whiz Julia Snowden returns to her Maine hometown to rescue the family’s clambake business. Although she has financial acumen, she lacks true knowledge of how a clam bake works. She learns the hard way when a murder and a wedding reception don’t mix. I wasn’t familiar with the inner workings of clam bakes, from menu to preparation, but I learned with Julia. I also enjoy Ross’s writing style. The combination of the storytelling plus the facts interwoven make this a good book choice.

For my last pick, I’ve chosen a novel published near the end of the Golden Age (roughly the 1920s through the 1950s). Author and solicitor Michael Gilbert set his novel in the chambers of Horniman, Birley, and Craine. After the death of the firm’s senior partner, a hermetically sealed deed box is opened, revealing the corpse of Marcus Smallbone, a co-trustee with the late Mr. Horniman of the valuable Ichbod Trust. With the help of newly qualified solicitor Henry Bohun, Chief Inspector Hazelrigg sorts through a maze of lies and misdirection to uncover the surprising perpetrator and motive. Martin Edwards, in the foreword to the Poisoned Pen Press edition, said, “The book blends in masterly fashion, an authentic setting, pleasingly differentiated characters, smoothly readable prose, and a clever puzzle.”