The Testament

ISBN: 9780712684606
Author: John Grisham
Description:
An eccentric, reclusive billionaire looking for a way to die, burnt-out Washington litigator just out of rehab for the fourth time, and a woman who left the modern world to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the jungles of Brazil. They are all brought together by the startling secret of The Testament. From the Publisher John Grisham's bestselling backlist repackaged with fantastic new covers --This text refers to the Paperback edition. From the Back Cover It was only a piece of paper but it could change many lives. Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and determined to cut his children out of his will. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumberances, and went to live in the deepest jungles of Brazil. Nate's job is to find Rachel and tell her of Phelan's legacy. In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure, their lives will be forever altered. 'Grisham is on top form with this legal blockbuster' Daily Mail 'A compulsory page-turner with a subterranean plot as old and potent as myth' Newsweek 'The Testament is his best novel in the past five... a brilliant first chapter... you have to go on reading' Mail on Sunday --This text refers to the Paperback edition. About the Author John Grisham:John Grisham is the author of eighteen bestselling novels. He lives with his family in Virginia and Mississippi. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. Excerpted from The Testament by John Grisham. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved Chapter One Down to the last day, even the last hour now. I'm an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I am ready for the hereafter; it has to be better than this. I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97 percent of the company housed in it, below me, and the land around it half a mile in three directions, and the two thousand people who work here and the other twenty thousand who do not, and I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to the building from my fields in Texas, and I own the utility lines that deliver electricity, and I lease the satellite unseen miles above by which I once barked commands to my empire flung far around the world. My assets exceed eleven billion dollars. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana and coffee in Kenya and coal in Angola and rubber in Malaysia and natural gas in Texas and crude oil in Indonesia and steel in China. My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find. I once owned all the appropriate toys - the yachts and jets and blondes, the homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery. I had three families - three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive and doing all they can to torment me. To the best of my knowledge, I fathered all seven, and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country. I am estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathering here today because I'm dying and it's time to divide the money. I have planned this day for a long time. My building has fourteen floors, all long and wide and squared around a shaded courtyard in the rear where I once held lunches in the sunshine. I live and work on the top floor - twelve thousand square feet of opulence that would seem obscene to many but doesn't bother me in the least. By sweat and brains and luck I built every dime of my fortune. Spending it is my prerogative. Giving it away should be my choice too, but I'm being hounded. Why should I care who gets the money? I've done everything imaginable with it. As I sit here in my wheelchair, alone and waiting, I cannot think of a single thing I want to buy, or see, or a single place I want to go, or another adventure I want to pursue. I've done it all, and I'm very tired. I don't care who gets the money. But I do care very much who does not get it. Every square foot of this building was designed by me, and so I know exactly where to place everyone for this little ceremony. They're all here, waiting and waiting, though they don't mind. They'd stand naked in a blizzard for what I'm about to do. The first family is Lillian and her brood - four of my offspring born to a woman who rarely let me touch her. We married young - I was twenty-four and she was eighteen - and so Lillian is old too. I haven't seen her in years, and I won't see her today. I'm sure she's still playing the role of the grieving, abandoned yet dutiful first wife who got traded in for a trophy. She has never remarried, and I'm sure she hasn't had sex in fifty years. I don't know how we reproduced. Her oldest is now forty-seven, Troy Junior, a worthless idiot who is cursed with my name. As a boy he adopted the nickname of TJ, and still prefers it to Troy. Of the six children gathered here now, TJ is the dumbest, though it's close. He was tossed from college when he was nineteen for selling drugs. TJ, like the rest, was given five million dollars on his twenty-first birthday. And like the rest, it ran like water through his fingers. I cannot bear to recount the miserable histories of Lillian's children. Suffice to say they're all heavily in debt and virtually unemployable, with little hope of changing, so my signing of this will is the most critical event in their lives. Back to the ex-wives. From the frigidity of Lillian, I ran to the steamy passion of Janie, a beautiful young thing hired as a secretary in Accounting but promoted rapidly when I decided I needed her on business trips. I divorced Lillian and married Janie, who was twenty-two years younger than I was and determined to keep me satisfied. She had two children as fast as she could. She used them as anchors to keep me close. Rocky, the younger, was killed in a sports car with two of his buddies, in a wreck that cost me six million to settle out of court. I married Tira when I was sixty-four. She was twenty-three and pregnant by me with a little monster she named Ramble, for some reason that was never clear to me. Ramble is now fourteen, and already has one arrest for shoplifting and one arrest for possession of marijuana. His oily hair sticks to his neck and falls way down his back, and he adorns himself with rings in his ears, eyebrows, and nose. I'm told he goes to school when he feels like it. Ramble is ashamed that his father is almost eighty, and his father is ashamed that his son has silver beads pierced through his tongue. And he, along with the rest of them, expects me to sign my name on this will and make his life better. As large as my fortune is, the money won't last long among these fools.

Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
Genre: General
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