There are a couple of important story threads in BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN.

However let's start at the beginning. Blanche Knowles, citrus baron Joe Knowles's wife, is raped in 1957, a Jim Crow year. She says it was a bushy-haired black man

Willis McCall, the virulent racist sheriff of Lake County, Floridas rounds up every black man he can find. The two main suspects are Sam Wiley Odom, whose main crime seems to be his uppity attitude and Bubba Hawkins who happens to be related to Virgil W. Hawkins who had the audacity to apply to law school at the University of Florida.

Then matters change. A white, mentally retarded man, Jesse Daniels, is arrested and promptly confesses, although he insists to his mother, his lawyers and everyone else he knows, he didn't do it. Now, why would a racist sheriff, who has gone so far as to murder black suspects, charge a white man with a crime the woman says a black man committed? She later changes her story, insisting it was so dark in the room she couldn't be sure who did it, but she identifies Jesse's voice. Remember the old saying, “Nothing is as it seems.”

Jesse avoids a trial by being found mentally incompetent to stand trial, and he is sent to Chattahoochee, the Florida insane asylum where he spends fourteen years, lumped in with violent criminals since he was charged with rape. Jesse's mother and just about everybody else he knows insists he wouldn't even know how to commit rape, nor would he hurt a fly.

Pearl Daniels finds a confidant in Newspaperwoman, Mabel Norris Reese who spends the next fourteen years trying to get Jesse out of Chattahoochee. She has evidence he didn't do it, but McCall and his henchman, county attorney, Gordon G. Odom Jr. won't even let Blanche see her son.

So . . . will Jesse ever get out? Will Willis McCall ever pay for his murderous behavior. I have to say I wanted to see him skinned alive, boiled in oil, and drawn and quartered. This is not a novel; this stuff actually happened. Willis McCall made Bull Conner look like Mary Poppins.

Oh, yeah, there's one more ingredient in this mud hole. Joe Knowles was a known ladies man. How does that enter into the picture and why did Blanche insist a white man raped her when she knew that wasn't true ? These questions will keep you turning pages.