Whitcoulls Recommends: Home Seeking and Presumed Guilty

Home Seeking by Karissa Chen. This is one of those big, epic sweeping stories which starts in one place and finishes up a long way away. Suchi and Haiwen are good friends and then teenage lovers in Shanghai during the Civil War. When Haiwen volunteers to go and do National Service (a gesture he makes so that his brother won’t have to) they lose track of each other. Life and the years then intervene so that it’s sixty years before they recognise each other in Los Angeles and slowly start to re-establish their connection. There’s a lot to this book – about identity, families, finding a place in the world and what one might have to sacrifice in order to do that.

Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow. In 1987 Scott Turow wrote Presumed Innocent, which knocked my socks off at the time – it was so, so good. Some years later he wrote a second book, Innocent, but here’s the one I’ve been waiting for which captures the essence of that first one all these (38!!) years later. Rusty Sabin is now older. Over the course of his career he’s been a prosecuting attorney, a judge, and even a defendant and convicted felon. Now he’s essentially retired, living in a small town and settled in a great relationship when suddenly all that is threatened when the son of his partner is accused of murder and Rusty steps up to help out. Great family and courtroom drama – the first in this series predated John Grisham by 4 years. Scott Turow really was a trailblazer and he’s still going strong. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb Books with Whitgkles for the best
selection of Greek reads.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Joining me now to talk books is Joan McKenzie. Good morning,
Good morning, Good to have you with us. Carissa Chen
has a book out called Home Seeking. Tell me about this. Oh,
it's really good.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It's one of those berg epic, sweeping stories that starts
in one place and finishes up a long way away
from where it started. And it's the story of Suchi
and Hi Wend who are childhood friends and then they
become teenage sweethearts. He's a really talented violinist and she's
really drawn to him by the music. But that all
falls apart when he signs up for the National Military Service,

(00:54):
which he does in order to stop his brother being
forced to enlist, so it's an act of real sacrifice,
and he goes off to the military training and she's
left on her own. And her parents are your keen
to get their daughters away from the Cultural Revolution, so
they send them to Hong Kong, where they really struggle
for several years. LIFs really really hard, and they get

(01:16):
a job in a very seedy establishment, and the only
way that Sushi manages to get out of there is
by marrying one of the patrons, which, as you might imagine,
doesn't go well. This is historical fiction because it's set
against the landscape of things like the Second Chinese Japanese War,
the Chinese Civil War, everything that went on with their
cultural revolution, and it covers a lot of ground. It

(01:38):
goes from Shanghai to Hong Kong, to Taiwan and finally
ends up in America, where sixty years later, Suchi and
Hi Wen, who have anglicized their names during those decades,
unexpectedly meet up again and start to reignite the friendship.
So it's about looking back over what they had and
what they've lost, and how they've found a sense of

(02:00):
place in the world, but what they've had to give
up in order to achieve that.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
It's lovely sounds like a wonderful yarn. What else for us?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
I've got Scott Turo's new book called Presumed Guilty. Now.
I first read him back in nineteen eighty seven when
he did a book which for me was a real breakthrough,
called Presumed Innocent. And you know he does courtroom drama.
He does it really, really well, so do people like
John Grisham, But I think Scott Turo was the first
because Presumed Innocent was four years earlier than John Grisham's

(02:30):
The Firm, So he really started a trend and he
did it beautifully with a character called Rusty Sabin. There's
been one sequel called Innocent, and now this third book
is called Presumed Guilty, and it's really really good.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
So only three books in what thirty eight eighty that's
right take you.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
To nice speak expansive story. So Rusty Sabin is now older,
he's in his seventies, and over the course of his
career he's been a lawyer, a prosecuting attorney, a judge,
and then in the second book he was in fact
a defendant and found guilty and imprisoned himself. So he's
got a lot of experience and he's got a nice life.

(03:11):
Now he's got a relationship with her high school principle.
Things are going really well until her son is accused
of murder and Rusty decides, against his better judgment, that
he will stand up and defend this guy in court.
So it's the story of what happens of the courtroom
drama as it unfolds, and if you like that sort

(03:31):
of story, this is really good. And then at the
end of course, all becomes clear and you find out
exactly what had happened and the fact that possibly that
trial should never have gone ahead.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I like the sound of both of these books, Joan.
I'm off on holiday. I think that these will take
the box perfectly what to take with me to read.
So thank you so much. Home Seeking by Carrisa Chen
and also Presumed Guilty by Scott to Row with the
two books that Joan spoke about will took next week.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
See then For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen lived to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.