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    Pleasantville
    Pleasantville
    Pleasantville
    Audiobook13 hours

    Pleasantville

    Written by Attica Locke

    Narrated by JD Jackson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

    From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire, this sophisticated thriller sees lawyer Jay Porter—hero of her bestseller Black Water Rising—return to fight one last case, only to become embroiled in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win.

    Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole Oil, Jay Porter is broke and tired. That victory might have won the environmental lawyer fame, but thanks to a string of appeals, he hasn't seen a dime. His latest case—representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire—is dragging on, shaking his confidence and raising doubts about him within this upwardly mobile black community on Houston's north side. Though Jay still believes in doing what's right, he is done fighting other people's battles. Once he has his piece of the settlement, the single father is going to devote himself to what matters most—his children.

    His plans are abruptly derailed when a female campaign volunteer vanishes on the night of Houston's mayoral election, throwing an already contentious campaign into chaos. The accused is none other than the nephew and campaign manager of one of the leading candidates—a scion of a prominent Houston family headed by the formidable Sam Hathorne. Despite all the signs suggesting that his client is guilty—and his own misgivings—Jay can't refuse when a man as wealthy and connected as Sam asks him to head up the defense. Not if he wants that new life with his kids. But he has to win.

    Plunging into a shadowy world of ambitious enemies and treacherous allies armed with money, lies, and secrets, Jay reluctantly takes on his first murder trial—a case that will put him and his client, and an entire political process, on trial.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 21, 2015
    ISBN9780062374042
    Pleasantville
    Author

    Attica Locke

    Attica Locke is the author of Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the UK’s Orange Prize, and also the national bestseller The Cutting Season, which won an Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She is a producer and writer on the Fox drama Empire. She is on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, where she lives.

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    Reviews for Pleasantville

    4/5

    19 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      FictionAttica LockePleasantville: A NovelNew York: HarperHardcover, 978-0-06-225940-0432 pages, $26.99April 21, 2015 Pleasantville is a historical neighborhood in Houston, Texas, “a planned community…built specifically for Negro families of means and class” in the wake of World War II, and one of its favorite sons, Axel Hathorne, has just entered a runoff election for mayor of Houston. The same night, someone is watching Alicia Nowell, a teenage girl who had been handing out leaflets door-to-door for the election as she stands on a street corner waiting for her ride, “still wanting to believe a way out was possible, but already knowing, with a creeping certainty, that this this night had turned on her, that her disappearing had already begun.” How’s that for a hook? Pleasantville is Attica Locke’s sequel to the many-award-nominated Black Water Rising is back -- with environmental plaintiff’s attorney Jay Porter, this time dealing with the death of his wife, single fatherhood, inertia, and a break-in at his law office that occurs the same night as the election, the same night the girl goes missing. When Hathorne’s campaign manager is arrested and charged with the murder of Alicia Nowell, Locke’s compelling setup for this complex, character-driven legal and political thriller is complete. Pleasantville has a complicated plot with lots of moving parts. There is a large cast of disparate, intriguing characters, liberally peppered with predators of all stripes. The pacing never lags, goosed along by artfully placed plot twists. The story is a highly entertaining brew of political and personal ambition garnished with journalistic, legal, and corporate corruption. All of which Locke handles beautifully. The cynicism of the political horse-trading is breathtaking and will confirm all of your conspiracy theories. A good number of the cast are politicians and their consultants, including the reincarnation of Lee Atwater, a city council member who can “hear the whir of a video camera from a block over” and a mayoral candidate who began wearing glasses when she entered the race because “talk of her pale green eyes and the height of her stiletto heels starting getting too much play in the press.” Porter’s floundering without his wife is touchingly conveyed. “There are things she knew about her family, not secrets so much as hard-earned intimacies, that she inadvertently took with her, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves in this new, foreign land, daily meeting at the kitchen table, or passing in the hallway, without their shared interpreter.” There is humor here, as well, spiced with sassy one-liners. At one point Porter concedes that “the breadth of his investigation is an ex-con skulking around Hollis’s [a suspect] place in a rusty El Camino.” Hollis’s place is one of those giant, generic apartment complexes with pretentious names. “This one has the nerve to call itself Beechwood Estates.” Full of family secrets and political secrets, Pleasantville gives new meaning to the truism that the political is personal. For lovers of intrigue and suspense, this is the total package.Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Jay Porter, a Houston lawyer, was first introduced to readers in Black Water Rising, a story of oil industry crime and corruption set in the 1980s. Fast forward to 1996, when personal circumstances have kept Jay out of the courtroom for nearly a year. On election night, a young campaign worker disappears from a Pleasantville street corner. Jay sees a potential link to two previous cases where the young women were later found murdered. When a young man is implicated in the girl's disappearance, his grandfather asks Jay to represent him. The grandfather is an influential political figure in Pleasantville, and well connected to others in Houston and Texas politics. Jay's investigation turns up a whole bunch of unpleasantness from political favors to racism to family drama, and through a series of twists and turns we eventually learn the true story of the girl's disappearance, and others receive their just desserts for their political misdeeds.As in Black Water Rising, Attica Locke weaves important societal themes into the story, tackling issues of prejudice and civil rights. And being set in 1996 with occasional references to the Bush family and then-president Bill Clinton, reminds us all of how American politics will change four years later. There was a lot happening in this novel, and I had a little difficulty keeping track of all the characters and the political machinations. When I sat down to read I frequently had to refresh my memory on what I'd read the day before. But I was also distracted by other things in "real life," which limited my reading time and affected my concentration. When I finally found myself with extended free time to dive in, I was fully immersed and enjoyed the story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Attica Locke’s novel opens on 5 November 1996, when Americans were in the process of returning President Clinton to serve his second term at the White House. The Presidential contest is not, however, the only election holding the attention of the people of Pleasantville, which is a real area in Houston, Texas. The locals there are being canvassed by rival candidates for a mayoral election which has split the local community. There are a lot of burning issues around Pleasantville. Jay Porter, the novel’s principal protagonist, has fought a number of class actions for the community over pollution caused by a number of large businesses, and has established himself as a thorn in the side Alicia Nowell is a young woman about to graduate from high school and has been helping the ‘get out the vote’ push for one of the candidates, delivering leaflets and fliers throughout the neighbourhood. With less than an hour to go before the polls close she decides to head for home, but as she waits on a street corner someone is watching her. She never makes it home, and her badly beaten corpse is found five days later, provoking a massive murder investigation. Shortly after her body is discovered the police arrest a prominent member of one of the electoral teams, and the case becomes a political football, drawing massive attention from the media. Reluctantly Porter bows to unwarranted personal pressure and agrees to represent the accused man.This book is a fascinating blend of political intrigue, courtroom confrontation and whodunit, with a fair sprinkling of the history of the civil rights movement thrown in. Locke crosses genres with ease, and manages the story with great dexterity. Jay Porter is a good man, and an empathetic character, grappling with self-doubt, money worries and the pressures of raising his children as a single parent, still wracked with grief over the death of his wife a year ago.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I must be honest and say that I found this book very heavy going. Despite the fact that it had rave reviews it just never clicked with me. Why? not really sure, perhaps that the reader needed to know a great deal about the American electoral system, and the Texan system in particular; perhaps because so much of the plot linked back to an earlier book by the same author. I never really related to the characters who seemed quite formulaic.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Pleasantville is a small town in Texas. It was a planned community housing retired army men, doctors, lawyers, etc who settled there in the years succeeding World War II. It was specifically built in the 1940’s to house black families of means and class. In the beginning of this story in 1996, eighteen year old Alicia Nowell goes missing. It’s feared she was abducted in the same manner as two other girls, both of whom were found dead about a week after their abduction. Now time is running out for Alicia.Jay Porter is an attorney in Pleasantville. Since his wife’s death a year earlier, he has been a single parent for their fifteen year old daughter, Ellie, and ten year old son, Ben. He had stopped taking new cases, and is managing two older cases — one to be appealed yet again and another one to hopefully offer an acceptable settlement. Quite unexpectedly, Jay finds himself taking another case in which Neal Hathorne has been accused of murder – Alicia’s body has been found. Neal is the grandson of Sam Hathorne, mayoral candidate and patriarch of one of Pleasantville’s founding families.This novel is complex offering many characters to comfortably follow and too many sub-plots within the story line. I felt like it was a bit of everything: A case several years old caught up in appeals; a newer case waiting to be settled; two dead girls, a more recent murder; an election campaign; and his daughter’s trouble in school. All of these factors slow the pace of the book; it does however, pick up in the latter half with the murder trial. I liked the character of Jay Porter. He had a great personality and was well-known and well-loved within the community. But, he had a few secrets of his own. In the author’s notes, it is stated that even though Pleasantville is a real place, portions of history and geography were fictionalized for the sake of the story. Her social commentary weaved within the pages of this novel are well-expressed. Pleasantville is a sequel to Black Water Rising, but can be read as a standalone. Rating: 3 out of 5.
    • 4/5
      3.5/5 l read and enjoyed Attica Locke's second novel, The Cutting Season, a few years ago. (my review) But, I hadn't read her first book Black Water Rising featuring attorney Jay Porter. Porter returns in Locke's newest book Pleasantville.1996. A young girl goes missing after a night of handing out flyers in the Houston neighbourhood of Pleasantville. Two other young women have been killed on the streets in the near past, but the crimes remain unsolved. There's also a fierce electoral race running for the mayor of Houston - and Pleasantville has put forward a candidate. When a family member of the local candidate is arrested for the murder of this last girl, Jay is brought in to defend him. But is he guilty or is the accusation a political tactic?I enjoyed Jay as a lead character. He's not a perfect man, but he's trying his best as a single father. He's also struggling with doing the right thing for his clients in the class action suit from Black Water Rising, but is growing tired of it all.Locke has penned a complex political/legal thriller, with the murder part of the plot taking a back seat. It's very well written. But, I found myself having to put it down every so often as the plot has so many myriad threads and players that I started to glaze over. I found the first part of the book slow going, but things picked up as the action moved into the courtroom. This is a personal bias though, as I find political machinations tedious. But, that being said, Locke's plotting is also excellent - and somewhat frightening. I honestly think that what she has presented in a fictional setting has its roots in reality - and corruption. Locke explores that theme, as well as family, class and race with a deft hand. It was only on reading the author's notes that I discovered that Pleasantville is an actual place in Texas. I wonder how much of Locke's story is based on fact?
    • 3/5
      It's a fine legal procedural, but the fact that it was on the Bailey's longlist made me expect it to be more than that.
    • 3/5
      Since I liked The Cutting Season so much, I decided to give Pleasantville a try. I didn't realize it was part of a series and wonder if I'd have liked it better if I'd read the first book. It's basically the story of a small Texas town where Jay Porter, attorney and single dad, lives with his two children. I especially liked watching Jay rebuild his family and home life after the death of his wife from cancer. It was more difficult to appreciate and follow the web of relationships and subplots that revolved around murder, small town politics, city elections and corruption. As one reviewer says, the narrative picked up with a murder trial, but for me that was three-quarters into the book. I almost gave up but stuck with it because of my admiration for the main character--and for Attica Locke's strong writing. I really did want to know how the story ended. Rating: 3 stars.