by Stephen King
Part of The Green Mile, book 6
First published 1996
Paul Edgecombe walks the Green Mile at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, the stretch of floor between the cells of condemned men and the electric chair waiting at the end. He has seen men make that walk before. Now it is John Coffey's turn. Coffey is a massive, gentle man convicted of murdering two young girls, and Paul has spent enough time with him to know something is deeply wrong with the verdict. The closer the execution date gets, the more certain Paul becomes. Coffey is not what the court decided he was. He may be something else entirely, something Paul has no framework to explain. But the machinery of the law does not stop for a prison guard's doubts. Paul watches the date approach and carries the weight of what he knows. This final installment of King's six-part serial novel closes out the story of Cold Mountain's death row with a sequence of events that Paul will spend the rest of his life trying to make sense of. Some things you witness cannot be put down. They go with you, and they do not let go.
Genres: drama, american-fiction, crime, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: haunting, introspective, melancholic, morally-complex, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: innocent-condemned, moral-ambiguity, unreliable-justice-system, witness-to-injustice
Setting: Cold Mountain Penitentiary, Green Mile
Period: 1930s
138 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: death, murder, violence