KEEN

For fifty years, King Newton has made his living getting people to believe him.

Then a man calls him by the wrong name, and King turns his head.

Before the law office and the judge’s chambers, he was Keen: a barefoot boy living in a chicken coop beside an Ohio canal, unable to say his own name. The school register says who he is. The village boys decide what he’s worth. When a word catches in his throat, people finish it for him, or laugh.

Amos Tate waits. Eighteen, quick with his fists, generous with what little he has, he’s the first person outside Keen’s family to take his word about his name.

Pearl Newton wants a future her family can’t afford. She intends to get it, and she knows exactly what her brother’s silence is worth.

In the summer of 1909, both will ask for Keen’s loyalty.

By October, he will be under oath.

Sixty years later, King Newton has a private appointment with the governor of Ohio and a story he has spent his life refusing to tell.

Now the old trial lawyer must put his own testimony on the record. He knows how to make a confession convincing.

He’s less certain he knows how to make it honest.