I just started reading the new James Patterson book Alex Cross’s Trial.  In the story, a young lawyer is sent to his boyhood home in Mississipi on a secretive mission from the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, to investigate a number of lynchings. While “home”, he has flashbacks of old friends, his mother, and terrible atrocities he witnessed as a child. 

From his grandmother, Alex Cross has heard the story of his great-unlce Abraham and his struggle for survival in rhew era of the Klu Klux Klan.  Now Alex passes the family tale along to his own children in a novel he’s written–a novel called Trial. 

As a lawyer in Washington, DC, early in the 1900s, Ben Corbett fights against oppression and racism, risking his family and his life in the process.  When President Theodore Roosevelt asks Ben to return to his hometown to investigate rumors of the resurgance of the Klu Klux Klan there, he cannot refuse.  (taken from bookjacket)