What did I read recently?

Lucia Lucia is the book I read in December. Before this, I read Grisham's Innocent Man.  

I loved reading Lucia Lucia. Thanks to TGND for her reviews. I picked this up from the Blossoms Book house after a long search. The book is about the story of Lucia's life, daughter of an Italian businessman , being brought up around a loving family in the US of A in 1950's ( I need to check on the year). I could relate to Lucia in certain aspects. And the way the Italian way of life and the values of Italian family is portrayed is more similar to the traditional Indian values. So, I could very well relate to the Italian way of life described by the author and was intrigued to know if it was true . The story has a good mix of love, loss, hatred, food and good human bonding. The plot is about Lucia's life and more concentrated around her age between 25-35.

The books that I have read which John Grisham has authored has revolved around law firms. Innocent Man was brought home by the better half borrowed from his colleague. I got to know that this book narrates a real-life incident that happened in the United States and that was the reason I picked this one. I started reading this one sometime around July or August , but repeated murders and drag till about 100 pages or so did not interest me in continuing it further. This book lay in my bedside table for many months before I picked it up late November -early December last year. I was determined to know how the plot would unfold and glad that I did.  The police are unable to solve the a couple of crimes and are pressed to find the accused. The hero of the story is a promising baseball player but gets hurt in one of the games and is declared unfit to play. Even after therapy and rehabilitation, he is unable to accept what has happened to him and goes into a spiral of drugs/alcohol and minor social accidents which earn him a bad reputation and gets noticed by the police every now and then. Just because the police are unable to solve the murders, they falsely accuse the hero (sorry, I forgot the name of the character who is the prime in this real-life incident. Will go home and edit this :) ) and he is even sentenced to death. A last minute (just days before the D-day) turn of events allows him to come out free. The book goes through the circumstances that he faces ,the trials he undergoes and how injustice is met by him . To think that this is something that happened in his life and to think that this happened in the US which from the outside looks to have a system where any injustice can be brought to the courts by the common man is quite shocking. This story happened not too long ago, may be in 70's. The first 100 pages or so are a little drag, they describe every murder, but after thatthe pace picks up and its a good read.