Quiz A Calamity of Souls David Baldacci

"A Calamity of Souls": The Ultimate 20-Question Quiz

Test Your Understanding of Baldacci's 2024 Legal Thriller

Set in the racially charged landscape of 1968 Virginia, A Calamity of Souls follows attorneys Jack Lee and Desiree DuBose as they defend Jerome Washington, a Black Vietnam veteran accused of murdering a wealthy white couple. The novel weaves legal drama with searing social commentary. This 20-question quiz spans the entire book—test your recall of the plot, the characters' motivations, the central symbols, and the story's broader implications.

Questions 1–12: Multiple Choice

In Chapter 1, what do Deputies Taliaferro and LeRoy do to the handcuffed Black suspect at the Randolph crime scene?
- A) They release him for lack of evidence
- B) Deputy Taliaferro beats him with a notched billy club while LeRoy reads Miranda rights
- C) They call a public defender to the scene
- D) They photograph his injuries for the arrest report
How is Miss Jessup related to Jerome Washington?
- A) She is his mother
- B) She is his great-grandmother-in-law
- C) She is his aunt
- D) She is his employer
What does Jack's mother Hilly believe caused her daughter Lucy's mental disability?
- A) A childhood fall
- B) Nitrous oxide inhaled during Lucy’s birth
- C) A high fever in infancy
- D) A hereditary condition on Frank's side
When Jack photographs the crime scene at the Randolph estate in Chapter 13, which detail does he capture that later proves significant?
- A) Jerome’s chauffeur’s cap lying on the floor
- B) Bloodstains, footprints, and a suspicious detail near Anne Randolph's chair
- C) A torn piece of a divorce pleading
- D) The blue convertible parked outside
What is the unusual tontine provision in Leslie and Anne Randolph's will?
- A) The estate is divided equally among all grandchildren
- B) The house and land are held in trust until only one of their two children remains alive
- C) Jerome Washington inherits a small cash gift
- D) The entire estate reverts to the commonwealth if both children die
Who is Janice Evans, and why is she critical to the defense?
- A) She is a forensic expert who contradicts the medical examiner
- B) She is the abortionist who can confirm Pearl Washington’s whereabouts during the murders
- C) She is a newspaper reporter who uncovers Judge Ambrose’s past
- D) She is the Randolphs’ former maid who witnessed the killings
Which vehicle does Jerome Washington report seeing near the Randolph house on the afternoon of the murders?
- A) A black sedan with New York plates
- B) A red pickup truck
- C) A blue convertible
- D) A white station wagon with a Confederate decal
At the climax of the trial in Chapter 90, Christine Hanover confesses to killing her father. What does she reveal about her mother’s death?
- A) Jerome Washington accidentally pushed her during an argument
- B) Sam Randolph poisoned his mother for the inheritance
- C) Leslie Randolph killed his wife in a rage over an impending divorce
- D) Gordon Hanover staged a break-in and murdered both parents
Moments after all charges are dismissed, what happens to Jerome Washington outside the courthouse?
- A) He collapses from his infected head wound
- B) He is arrested on a federal warrant
- C) He is shot and killed by teenager Kenny LeRoy
- D) He boards a bus to start a new life in Chicago
Why does civil rights attorney Desiree DuBose travel to Freeman County to involve herself in the case?

A) She is a family friend of the Washingtons
B) She recognizes a case with national implications and offers to serve as co-counsel
C) She has been assigned by the Virginia Supreme Court
D) She is writing a book about southern justice

At the end of the novel, what does the hand-carved “DuBose and Lee” sign represent for Jack and Desiree?

A) A temporary office arrangement while the garage is being repaired
B) A partnership forged across racial lines and a shared commitment to fight for change
C) A failed business venture abandoned after the trial
D) A gift from Frank Lee that Jack intends to discard

Who planted the bayonet in the tree stump on the Washington property to frame Jerome?

A) Deputy Gene Taliaferro
B) Howard Pickett
C) Walter Gates, acting on his father Curtis’s instructions
D) Sam Randolph

Questions 13–20: Short Answer

Plot / Sequence – After initially hesitating, what combination of personal experiences and family encouragement leads Jack Lee to take Jerome Washington’s case?
Character Motivation – Pearl Washington refuses for most of the novel to reveal where she was on the afternoon of the murders. What secret is she protecting, and why does she fear disclosing it?
Plot / Sequence – How does Jerome Washington’s Vietnam War injury physically refute the prosecution’s theory that he committed the murders?
Theme / Symbol – Discuss how the all-white, all-male jury functions as a symbol of systemic racism within the novel’s legal setting.
Theme / Symbol – Hilly Lee’s hidden friendship with a Black boy named Joshua Taylor, and her later loss of that friendship, surfaces late in the novel. What does this revelation contribute to the book’s exploration of racism and personal guilt?
Character Motivation – At Lucy’s funeral, Miss Jessup presents a music box and reveals that she secretly cared for Lucy when Hilly was hospitalized. What motivates Miss Jessup to share this history at that particular moment?
Synthesis – Compare Jack and DuBose’s working relationship when they first meet with their partnership at the novel’s close. How does the arc of their collaboration reflect the book’s larger vision of racial progress?
Synthesis – Jerome Washington is legally exonerated yet murdered minutes after his release. How does this outcome comment on the gap between legal justice and lived safety for Black Americans in the novel?

Answer Key

B – Deputy Taliaferro beats him with a notched billy club while LeRoy reads Miranda rights. Chapter 1 opens with the deputies brutalizing the still-unnamed Jerome Washington, using Miranda recitation as a performance of legality while Taliaferro delivers a ritualized beating.
B – She is his great-grandmother-in-law. Miss Jessup identifies herself as the great-grandmother-in-law of Jerome Washington and approaches Jack specifically to seek legal help for him.
B – Nitrous oxide inhaled during Lucy’s birth. In Chapter 2, Jack reflects that Lucy’s condition resulted from nitrous oxide administration during labor, a fact that has burdened Hilly with lifelong guilt.
B – Bloodstains, footprints, and a suspicious detail near Anne Randolph’s chair. Jack’s crime-scene photographs, taken while Edmund Battle taunts him, later become essential in exposing inconsistencies in the prosecution’s forensic narrative.
B – The house and land are held in trust until only one of their two children remains alive. The tontine arrangement, revealed by estate lawyer Curtis Gates in Chapter 30, means the ultimate survivor of Christine and Sam inherits the valuable property, creating a powerful financial motive.
B – She is the abortionist who can confirm Pearl Washington’s whereabouts during the murders. Pearl’s illegal abortion (Chapter 49) provides an ironclad alibi; Janice Evans is the provider whose corroboration the defense needs.
C – A blue convertible. Jerome tells Jack in Chapter 18 that he saw a small blue convertible outside the Randolph house around 4:00 p.m. It is later tied to Walter Gates.
C – Leslie Randolph killed his wife in a rage over an impending divorce. Christine testifies (Chapter 90) that her father flew into a rage upon learning Anne planned to divorce him, struck her fatally, and then attacked Christine, prompting her to kill him in self-defense.
C – He is shot and killed by teenager Kenny LeRoy. In Chapter 91, immediately after the trial and Jack’s impromptu unity speech, Deputy Raymond LeRoy’s son Kenny guns down Jerome and wounds Jack before Jeff Lee kills the shooter.
B – She recognizes a case with national implications and offers to serve as co-counsel. DuBose arrives at Jack’s home after his beating (Chapter 23) and presents herself as a civil rights lawyer who may be “the answer to his prayers,” later formally joining the defense.
B – A partnership forged across racial lines and a shared commitment to fight for change. The sign, carved by Frank Lee, remains in the garage after the trial and later becomes the name of their Chicago law firm, symbolizing durable professional union and hope.
C – Walter Gates, acting on his father Curtis’s instructions. Christine’s confession reveals that the Gates family orchestrated the framing of the Washingtons, including planting the bayonet and the bonus money to redirect suspicion.
Sample answer: Jack is moved by Miss Jessup’s desperate plea, nudged by his father Frank (who has been secretly watching his courtroom work and drives him to the Black neighborhood), and gradually strips away his own passivity as he confronts the county’s racism. A threatening phone call, his childhood memory of defending Black children on the Penny Bridge, and his mother’s contradictory lessons all crystallize into resolve.
Sample answer: Pearl was raped by her white employer, became pregnant, and sought an illegal abortion on the afternoon of the murders. She conceals this because admitting an abortion could lead to her arrest, and she fears that revealing the rape—which the police dismissed—would further endanger her family and damage Jerome’s case.
Sample answer: Medical examiner Herman Till testifies that the fatal blows required planting the left foot and putting full body weight into the swing. When Jack asks Jerome to replicate the motion, his war-damaged left leg collapses, making it physically impossible for him to have delivered the strokes. Additionally, the height trajectory of the wounds does not fit Jerome’s six-foot-five frame.
Sample answer: Despite the county’s large Black population, the jury pool is all white and all male. DuBose’s constitutional challenges are overruled, and peremptory strikes remove any juror who might harbor empathy. The jury composition illustrates how legal machinery—voir dire, peremptory challenges, judicial discretion—can be wielded to preserve white supremacy even when the formal law proclaims equality.
Sample answer: Hilly’s confession (Chapter 70) exposes the personal cost of systemic racism: she loved a Black boy as a young woman but surrendered the relationship under pressure from the community and a preacher who told her Lucy’s disability was divine punishment. The buried friendship personalizes the novel’s argument that segregation damages white people morally and emotionally, not just Black people materially.
Sample answer: Miss Jessup chooses the funeral to reveal that she was the hidden caregiver who raised Lucy during Hilly’s mental-health crisis. By presenting the music box and speaking her truth, she reclaims her invisible labor and forces the Lee family—especially Jack—to recognize the depth of her sacrifice and the sin of ignoring her for decades.
Sample answer: When DuBose first arrives, she distrusts Jack as a white southerner and wants him to withdraw; Jack is intimidated and uncertain. By the end, DuBose has taught him trial strategy, he has taught her to shoot, and they have weathered multiple attempts on their lives. Their evolution from wary co-counsel to partners who open a firm together models the novel’s thesis that lasting racial progress is built one deliberate, cross-racial relationship at a time.
Sample answer: The legal system ultimately declares Jerome innocent and frees him, but the acquittal offers no protection from the entrenched vigilante violence that pervades Freeman County. Kenny LeRoy’s act of murder—and the deputies’ hesitation to shoot a white teenager—demonstrates that courtroom victories cannot, by themselves, dismantle the culture of white supremacy. The novel closes with the sobering reminder that the arc of justice is not only long but lethally contested.

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