B J Bartmann

Due South B J Bartmann

Julia McKenzie was not a criminal lawyer. While her first visit to the Charleston jail was just a favor for her best friend, Julia was drawn into the defense of a promising young basketball star. His future was on the line; so was hers as she sought her place in a Southern city where deep roots are everything. Unlike the pace at her old DC law firm, time here proceeded at a pace akin to the native drawl, punctuated by open drawbridges and steeped to saturation in the sweet scent of pluff mud and rich, resonant history. But beneath the charm and gentility dwelt a silent song of grace, guilt and grit. Plunged into the antebellum traditions of the Old South, she came face to face with the legacy of being black or white, a reality not covered by any course at Georgetown Law. Consumed by a case of sexual assault, Julia learned more than anyone needs to know about rape and its devastating aftermath. Recovering from divorce, Julia found healing along the cobblestone streets with horse-drawn carriages, among the sandpipers and pelicans on Sullivan's Island, and in the love from her dearest friend, trained in psychology. She knew now that she had given away her own right to judge herself adequate, talented, good company. It was her daily goal to take it back. Steeped in the aura of magnolias, looking up to old church steeples that watched over the city, nurtured by the song of the sea, Julia found that the scales of justice are tipped by Lowcountry mystique as surely as the best prepared legal argument.