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RATING: |
Date of Release: January 2003 |
Publisher: Allen & Unwin |
Review Source: |
Scorched Earth deals with a boiling pot of current issues: racism and religion, the Law and the Press. Add to these issues a host of all too common failings in personal relationships and you have an intricate tale, a complex enigma, that even with its end leaves room for interpretation and further thought.
A married couple has a child after months of normal worry and concern, their only desire is that their child be healthy. A little girl is born and has a life measured in only minutes, a time so brief there is barely time to absorb her infirmity before she is gone. The child lives long enough to be given the name Nora Carol, and then is laid to rest in a church graveyard where her grandmother - with whom she shares her name - is a church leader and elder. The child has no rest, however, for her grandmother is white, her mother is white, but her father is black, and that is enough to make this child unwelcome. The church elders agree without exception, and the child is taken from her grave rapidly and without any sensitivity.
With nothing more than tradition to mask their racist beliefs, the community starts a series of events that lead to their church burning to the ground, an apparent murder, and a rush to judgment fueled by the same ignorance that violated a child's grave. Blinded thinking adds crimes without basis; the District Attorney adds charges no more founded in fact than the accusations they are based on, in a quest for a capital crime conviction. A conviction that would bring death to one man as it embellishes the resume of another.
Scorched Earth deals with people and their personal demons, secrets that they will do almost anything to hide. And Robbins' tale is meticulously constructed, a maze of false leads and misdirection. And when the end arrives more will be revealed than any reader could imagine.
An excellent work by an author willing to step away from what has worked before, to expand his skill to another genre, and to do so brilliantly.
