Book Two of the Round Rock Series

A doctor who can’t remember her crime.
A reporter fighting for the story of her life.
Two women at a crossroads in a town that never forgets.

In the summer of 1952, Lillian Johnson was found dead in her home, slumped in the wheelchair that had become her cage due to multiple sclerosis. An overdose of barbiturate had triggered a heart attack, but the scene was not quite right. It looked as though someone other than Lillian herself had injected the fatal dose.

Dr. Kate Marlow, Lillian’s physician and best friend, now sits in the Round Rock city jail. The only country doctor for miles, Kate cannot remember her whereabouts at the time of Lillian’s death⎯and the small Tennessee town buzzes with judgment.

As Dr. Kate’s trial approaches, another woman is determined to uncover the truth about the night of Lillian’s death. Memphis reporter Shenandoah Coleman grew up in Round Rock on the wrong side of the tracks, but unlike the rest of her unsavory clan, escaped her destiny. Now, back in the town she grew up in, she’ll have to turn every stone to keep Kate from a guilty verdict.

The Trial of Dr. Kate is the second novel in a four-part series from Michael E. Glasscock III that explores the intricate social cloth of Round Rock, Tennessee. Though each story stands alone, readers who enjoyed Glasscock’s first Round Rock tale, Little Joe, will delight in the cameo appearances in this one.

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### From Publishers Weekly

A rags-to-respectability reporter, Shenandoah Coleman, heads home to Round Rock, Tenn., in 1952 to cover the trial of a childhood friend, Dr. Kate Marlow, and come to terms with her own backwoods clan's reviled past, in this richly drawn tale of love, loyalty, and acceptance—the second of Glasscock's four-part Round Rock series (after Little Joe). At the heart of the novel—which is as much a paean to long-gone rural culture as it is a murder mystery—is the bond of two fiercely driven women who became friends as children, despite the fact that they came from different backgrounds. What should I do? Lay open all the old wounds? Shenandoah asks after learning of the murder charge against Kate, an adored country doctor—and closet alcoholic—whose patient, married to Kate's ex-boyfriend, is found dead alongside one of the doctor's syringes. Shenandoah comes to Kate's defense and finds herself the target of a dangerous stalker, but also begins to soften to the town she left behind—and to a widower who sparks the possibility of love. Glasscock, a retired otologist, shows a heartfelt tenderness for the flawed Kate as she faces her addiction. But he also tempers the golden-hued veneer of Southern charm and '50s values with the bitter reality of racial bias and violence. There's no perfect ending for Shenandoah and Kate, but their journey back—to each other, to love, and to family—is a satisfying one. (Oct.)

### From Booklist

Shenandoah Coleman, a reporter for the Memphis Express in 1952, feels fortunate to have escaped her childhood squalor near Round Rock, Tennessee, and her family known for being poor and sometimes troublemaking white trash. But when she learns that Dr. Katherine Marlow, a classmate who had befriended her, is charged with killing one of her patients, Shenandoah goes home to cover the trial. In no time, she renews her friendship with Dr. Kate and her antipathy for Sheriff Jasper Kingman (another former classmate), falls for handsome auto mechanic Bobby Johnson, and is pursued by someone who apparently hates her as much as she hates Kingman. Glasscock seems to have heeded criticism of his first Round Rock novel, Little Joe (2013), for lacking emotion, because this second in a projected series of four is pumped full of it, albeit sometimes with insufficient character development. Loosely linked to Little Joe (through Frances Washington, Little Joe’s grandmother, who changed young Shenandoah’s life by introducing her to books), this novel captures a time and place in telling a fast-moving, increasingly involving story. --Michele Leber