The Burden of Proof #2

           My book chronicles the life of Sandy Stern, who is a lawyer. This book was a sequel to the author Scott Turow’s book Presumed Innocent. This novel is very unique due to the fact that it deals with two separates parts of the story. The first side of the story deals with Sandy’s personal life. The story begins with Sandy’s wife being found dead when Sandy returns home from a business trip in Chicago. I originally had assumed that this would lead to the basis of the story, a mystery about how Sandy’s wife died. However this was not the case. What ends up happening throughout the first half of the book is that Sandy starts to learn many things about his wife’s very secretive life. On page 148-149, Sandy asked “Did my Wife have a virus, by the way? The lieutenant who Sandy was talking to responded “Herpes.” I would describe Sandy’s personal life as “from bad to worse”, as his wife dies, and he then figure out that she had herpes and that he could have herpes.

          The second side of the story deals with Sandy’s occupation as a lawyer. He is dealing with a case in which his client named Dixon. Dixon has been accused of trading ahead of the market. Sandy explains what Dixon does on page 178, when he says “Smaller orders were placed on the Kindle Exchange just before you went into the Chicago market with a large order that would affect prices everywhere. And thos kindle orders were always written with botched account numbers, so that after clearing, they would end up being credited in the house error account, leaving a profit just a few pennies shy of 600,000” At this point in the book, Sandy is unsure of whether himself and Dixon are in a favorable position, so I would label this one “Which way is up."

          I think Turow’s approach of splitting up Sandy’s life is very unique, and I would predict that in the end, the two sides of his life merge, with each one playing a significant role in the final outcome of the story. I also think that because of this unique organization, you could not accurately plot the story’s ups and downs unless you were to split up his personal and his work life, as some things go terrible in his personal life as some things go well in his work life. That is why I decided to present two different graphs. His personal life goes from bad to worse, as his wife dies, and then he finds out he has herpes. His legal side is up and down, but lacks extremes, and neither he nor his client is sure of how the case will end up.

              (Personal Life)                                                         (Occupational Life)