The Confession

by John Grisham

In 1998, Travis Boyette abducts and rapes Nicole "Nikki" Yarber, a teenage girl and high school student in Slone, Texas and buries her body in Joplin, Missouri some 6 hours from Slone. He watches unfazed as the police arrest and convict Donté Drumm, a black high school football player with no connection to the crime. Despite his innocence, Drumm is convicted and sentenced to death. He has been on death row for nine years when the story takes place. While Drumm serves his prison sentence, lawyer Robbert "Robbie" Flak fights his case while Black Americans protest his false conviction, creating a law and order situation.

Meanwhile, Boyette has fled to Kansas and has been living there ever since. He has been suffering with a brain tumor for the past nine years and his health has deteriorated. In 2007, with Drumm's execution only a week away, reflecting on his miserable life, he decides to do what is right: confess. He meets a pastor, Reverend Keith Schroeder who takes him to Slone. Despite his confession to the public, the execution proceeds on and Drumm is executed by lethal injection. The town is beset by racial tension though a riot is averted. Boyette then reveals the resting place of Nikki and DNA samples show signs of rape and assault on her body. But before there is an arrest warrant for him, he takes off. In Slone, Flak leads legal attacks on those responsible for the false conviction and execution, while Schroeder agonizes over what he has done; taken a paroled convicted rapist who was also probably a murderer, out of his parole zone (the state of Kansas). Schroeder winds up making his actions public, paying a fine, resigning from his church and accepting a position at a reform-minded church in Texas. The latter happens after Boyette is caught attempting another rape.