If you’ve ever been to a Virginia Cavaliers basketball at John Paul Jones Arena, you can bet that if you look to the first row around midcourt, you’ll see world-renowned author John Grisham, a staple in Charlottesville. Known to the rest of the world as the mastermind behind countless award-winning legal thrillers, his latest work is about an entirely different type of court: the basketball court.
In Sooley, his first basketball novel, Grisham writes about the story of Samuel “Sooley” Sooleymon, a raw-talented, young player who comes to the United States to play basketball, only to learn that his family is in danger back home as a civil war rages across South Sudan.