Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. His heirs, to no one's surprise--especially Troy's--are circling like vultures. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage is a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of ...
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Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. His heirs, to no one's surprise--especially Troy's--are circling like vultures. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage is a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humour. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder. Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumbrances, and went to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the deepest jungles of Brazil. In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure, their lives are forever altered by the startling secret of The Testament. (P)2001 Random House, LLC
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Nate O'Riley was a high powered attorney that we find in rehab (for the fourth time). He has botched two marriages with a total of four children. The firm he used to work for has sent him to Brazil to find a 42 year old missionary/doctor who has inherited 15 billion dollors from a father she really never knew. She is illegitimate. Her father, Troy Phelan, has six legitimate children, and three ex-wives whom he despises, and visa versa. Everyone thinks he has a brain tumor and is about to die. He leaves a new will, that he has hand written, and jumps to his death from his fourteenth floor office while all his children and ex-wives are assembled to hear the reading of his will. The book has three plots. The first is about Nate O'Riley, his bouts with addiction and finding himself. The second is about finding the missionary/doctor in the jungles of Brazil, and finding out she doesn't want the money. And third, all the courtroom battles that go on from the children who are written out of the will, and their attorneys, and their desire to declare their father crazy. A great plot from the mind of a great writer.
SeldomSeen
Oct 25, 2007
Our Best Storyteller
John Grisham may well be America's best storyteller. Sure, his novels lack the complexity that make English professors salivate, but, for the rest of us, Grisham tackles the issues that cut to the core of present day America. The Testment is a story of avarice, decadence and ambition. At its heart is flawed attorney,Nate O' Reilly, whose career has flamed out leaving him adrift in mid-life. When he's sent to to the Brazilian jungle to find an heir to a fortune, it is a journey into, not the heart of darkness, but the soul of 21st century America. As with most Grisham novels, this 400 page novel reads like one half its length and is over all too soon.