It was a house purchase gone horribly wrong.
When Jennifer Campbell decided to move to Norfolk, Virginia, she arranged to move in to what she believed would be the perfect house for her. She had plans for her new life in the community and was excited to enter this phase of her life. However, when she arrived in Norfolk ready to move in, she discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson weren’t ready to leave. In fact, they hadn’t even packed.
An older couple, they didn’t appear to understand why she was so upset. She’d just traveled for hours to get there, had no where else to go, had given them money, and they were still on her property. She insists that they leave, they’re angry with her for insisting, and the whole thing turns into a fiasco with the neighbors watching on. She wins, but her neighbors vow they’ll never speak to her as long as she lives there.
Thinking her problems with the Wilsons are over, she goes about settling in to her new home, even though she feels something evil lurks there. When a package is delivered to her door and she unthinkingly opens it, everything in her world turns upside down. It’s full of guns, and she doesn’t know what to do.
Her boyfriend works in the legal field, and she calls him. He tells her to hang on to the box—it’s obviously the Wilsons, and she should make them come pick it up. That simple act and that decision made in good faith end up nearly destroying Jennifer. She is taken to court, she is sent to jail, words are put in her mouth and she is sent on a journey to the darkest abyss. It seems that no one is on her side, no one believes her, and she can’t make anyone understand the simplicity of her decision. She’s about to give up all hope when at the very end, light breaks through the shadows and she finally has hope.
I liked the premise of “Embittered Justice” very much but did find the plot hard to follow in places. Overall, it was an enjoyable story about the legal system and how easily it can become corrupted.
(This book was published in 2007 by PublishAmerica.)