Bridge at Mission Springs
Longtime Orlando trial lawyer Howard Marsee has authored an intense novel about the rule of law with the trial in the plot not dominating the story and only occurring near its end.
The novel, Bridge At Mission Springs, is dedicated by Marsee to the memory “of more than 3,200 Black men lynched in the South between 1880 and 1940.” Set in 1942 in North Florida (most all town names are fictional), the story focuses on the brutal lynching of a young Black boy, Joshua Bulow, from a bridge near the town Mission Springs on the Suwannee River by a group of white men incensed by the boy sending a Christmas card to a white girl.
The story begins when Trey Binyon, the only white reporter for a Black Chicago newspaper, is on his way to Tampa to cover a story when he witnesses the lynching, but does not yell out to the lynch mob or report the crime knowing he may face severe and immediate repercussions. Shortly thereafter, Trey joins the Army after America enters World War II. In 1946, after the war, he returns to Jim Crow Florida determined to cover the story of the boy’s lynching for his Chicago paper. His motivations are not clear.
His Army unit was saved by a unit of Black soldiers during the siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Trey’s father is a gentlemanly, true southern trial lawyer in Valdosta, Georgia, who is content with a segregated society. Trey has avoided following his dad into the practice of law — much to the father’s disappointment. Does Trey feel guilty, does he want vengeance, or is he in pursuit of justice?
In Mission Springs, Trey encounters people who have little regard for killing anyone of any race to protect the old southern way of life. Less than honorable law enforcement focuses on order without respect to the law. The KKK is free to rule the area as a quasi-government; and, when a trial occurs later in the novel, a racist state attorney and an abusive judge seek to deliver their own style of justice.
The trial occurs after a member of Joshua’s 1942 lynch mob is found hanged. Joshua’s brother, Caleb Bulow, is accused of the crime. Caleb is a heroic veteran who thought that racial attitudes might change after the war with his service. Trey’s father reluctantly defends Caleb with the assistance of a young Black lawyer from Florida.
Marsee writes a good story with sound characters who are believable as real people with true challenges. In terms of the message to lawyers, perhaps the statement from Trey’s father to Trey is most salient when he says, “every decent lawyer I know struggles with the question of justice. For hundreds of years, people have written about it. Best I’ve come up with is that justice is just a goal in an imperfect world. All we can do is pursue it.”
Lonnie N. Groot practices law in Daytona Beach Shores.
