Farmington

Clarence Darrow, the legendary defense attorney who cross-examined William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial, turns his piercing intellect inward in this rare autobiographical novel. Written with the same sharp wit that made him a legend in the courtroom, Farmington captures Darrow's childhood in the coal country of Pennsylvania with startling honesty and self-deprecating humor. The narrator, calling himself John Smith, refuses to embellish his origins, he insists his life is ordinary, yet the portrait that emerges is anything but. Through family dynamics, early school days, and the small dramas of small-town life, Darrow examines how we construct our own narratives and how memory shapes the self. The book crackles with observations that reveal a mind already destined for greatness: incisive, unsentimental, and surprisingly tender beneath its cynical surface. This is not a glorification of youth but a clear-eyed reckoning with how we become who we become.