From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King comes a chilling exploration of one of America's most haunting wrongful conviction cases. Based on the hit podcast, Bone Valley dives into the dark heart of rural Florida, where a young man's life was upended by a tragic miscarriage of justice.
"Captivating, enraging, and all too true." —Bob Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road
"Bone Valley is a work of rare moral clarity and deep compassion." ―Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
In 1987, Leo Schofield was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Michelle. Always insistent on his innocence, he was poorly served by his legal defense: the investigation was sloppy, the case flimsy, and numerous pieces of evidence were ignored. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Over thirty years later, Gilbert King is tipped off to Leo's case and is astonished by what he found: layers...]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2025 19:40:35 +0200 https://library.land/gilbert-king/101516-beneath_a_ruthless_sun.html https://library.land/gilbert-king/101516-beneath_a_ruthless_sun.html
"Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret.
In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in her home while her husband is away. She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial.
But crusading...]]> Sun, 11 Nov 2018 14:04:26 +0200 https://library.land/gilbert-king/200684-devil_in_the_grove.html https://library.land/gilbert-king/200684-devil_in_the_grove.html
A gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law, Devil in the Grove brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before. As Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns did for the story of America's black migration, Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove does for this great untold story of American legal history, a dangerous and uncertain case from the days immediately before Brown v. Board of Education in which the young civil rights attorney Marshall risked his life to defend a boy slated for the electric chair—saving him, against all odds, from being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.]]> Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:32:01 +0200