Actress Viola Davis already has one of the most impressive résumés in film history. The Academy Award winner is already the most nominated Black actress of all time and is one of only a few entertainers to have an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). Now the South Carolina native’s upcoming novel, alongside esteemed novelist James Patterson, has a release date.
Davis and Patterson are working on “Judge Stone,” a courtroom drama set to hit bookshelves on March 9. It is available for pre-orders now.
According to the book’s synopsis, “Judge Stone” centers on Judge Mary Stone, a respected circuit judge in the tiny Alabama town of Union Springs who must navigate a deeply divisive, ethically fraught courtroom battle. When a doctor is charged under draconian abortion laws after performing a procedure on a 13-year-old girl, Stone must balance her devotion to justice, her community, and her own reelection prospects.
Patterson is already giving fans a glimpse into the book’s creation, announcing on Instagram on Wednesday (Feb. 18) an in-person event in New York to mark its release.
“Want to spend an evening with @violadavis and me? We’ll be talking all things JUDGE STONE: the book, the audiobook, the movie… I promise it’ll be a special one,” he captioned his post.
The event will also be livestreamed.
Writing a book isn’t a new concept for Davis. She penned her memoir, 2022’s “Finding Me,” which discusses her tumultuous childhood and her rise to become one of the most accomplished actresses of all time.
“I felt like I was in the middle of a really weird existential crisis during the pandemic, a crisis of meaning,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “Like, ‘What is this supposed to mean?’ And by revisiting my childhood, the purest form of who I was, I sort of began to understand just who Viola was from the very beginning before the world touched her. When I had dreams and hopes, even with all of the trauma going on. The thing about it is the Viola of yesterday, even as hard as it looks, she survived. She made it through [and] I needed her now.”
