From corporate law to crime thrillers, the Atlanta author loves righting wrongs

It refers to homes and land that are passed down from generation to generation without a legally designated owner, resulting in fractional ownership divided among several living descendants of a family. If a developer can convince a single heir to sell his share of the property, he can force a court-ordered sale of the entire property, even if the other co-owners object – even if one owner gets evicted from the street. In other words, heir property is a mechanism of gentrification at its most rapacious, and you can guess who loses.

“Those affected tend to be land rich but cash poor, and don’t have easy access to tax and estate planning services,” says Morris, who lives in Atlanta. “This is a huge problem for black and brown communities and poor and white communities in Appalachia. In the Lowcountry regions of the South, most of the heirs’ estates were acquired by black Americans after emancipation. Land once deemed undesirable because of its mosquito-infested marshes is now in high demand by developers.”

Beloved ancestral homes, with their bottle trees and doors painted “haint blue,” are giving way to luxury resorts for pennies on the dollar.

“The end result is loss of generational wealth,” says Morris. “An estimated $30 billion in generational wealth is lost each year in Georgia alone because of heirs property laws.”

That’s a lot of money. Land, inheritance: people were murdered for less. Morris saw a ready-made narrative plot.

It takes a skilled writer to create a suspenseful film ostensibly about real estate, but she rises to the occasion in her third novel, “What You Leave Behind” (HarperCollins, $30), set in Brunswick and rich in vivid characterizations. Morris has created his own beguiling form of magical realism as a chorus of Geechee-Gullah ancestors recount each chapter of their patois with numinous effect, and kindly clues lend a hand in solving crimes. It’s a lyrical document of a vibrant culture as well as an expose of real-life questionable business practices. Honor your ancestors, the lesson says, and they will protect you.

“I needed what the old folks called a ‘cleanse day.’ A new day. A new beginning,” muses the heroine as she leaves her Atlanta law office to return home to the coast, where trouble awaits them.

Morris says, “I wanted to write about a woman who’s just trying to live her life with all her little secrets, and I wanted it to be entertaining, but I also want to talk about what’s going on in the bigger world around her . I wanted to raise the question of the heirs’ assets and highlight what is essentially a crime in full view of everyone, the only beneficiaries of which are those who have unscrupulous means.

“We are disembarking; we of land”, says the expression of a people deeply rooted in a place draped in Spanish moss.

The author, who writes under the name Wanda M. Morris, was born far from the coast in Cleveland, Ohio, the youngest of seven children. The daughter of a janitor and a nurse, she was the first in her family to attend college. “I was that kid with my nose in a book, curled up in a corner of the library,” she says. “My mother was of Geechee-Gullah descent and was very passionate about dream interpretation.”

She was aware early on of the lack of cultural representation in literature. “Dick and Jane didn’t look like me,” she says, “but I came across Toni Morrison. I must have been in sixth grade when I read “Sula” and “The Bluest Eye,” and those books changed my life. From there I moved on to Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston. Then she “landed” in suspense stories and devoured Dashiell Hammett. “I enjoyed discovering the puzzle aspect of mysteries.”

She attended Case Western Reserve University and earned a degree in accounting. She did math for a while before returning to her alma mater to study law. A job at a law firm brought her to Atlanta after graduation. “In my first week on the job I met a boy and we are still going strong 30 years and three children later,” she says.

She practiced law at several Fortune 500 companies, but the desire to write never left her. “I kept packing it and packing it, and eventually I had to write,” she says. Morris’s first novel, the legal thriller “All Her Little Secrets,” received immediate acclaim. It was the top pick for “Library Reads” by librarians across the country, and it was optioned for a limited series, starring and executive produced by three-time Emmy winner Uzo Aduba. (Morris will serve as executive producer.)

The late author joined Atlanta’s Sisters in Crime group, where she found helpful mentors.

“I have to admit, at first I was like, ‘Who is this lady writing about Atlanta?’ This is my city,” says thriller maestra Karin Slaughter. “Then I read his first book, and it was a revelation. Wanda is not only a great storyteller, she’s a really good writer, and you can feel her legal brain at work as she crafts the plots because they’re so tightly drawn. There are no holes, which is really difficult to do. You’d never guess she hasn’t been writing for years because she avoids all the beginner’s mistakes. You know who to root for and who should be punished for their dastardly actions.

Morris doesn’t limit himself to thrillers. Her second novel, “Anywhere You Run,” is literary fiction set in the Jim Crow South and follows the itinerant lives of two sisters after the murder of a white man in Mississippi. Kathy Hogan Trocheck, who writes under the name Mary Kay Andrews, will moderate the “What You Leave Behind” book launch June 18 at the Georgia Center for the Book in Decatur.

“Immersing yourself in Wanda Morris’ latest thriller is a guilty pleasure,” says Trocheck. “I loved her latest book, not only because this year we both chose to write about the same part of coastal Georgia, but also because she sees this landscape through an entirely different prism. It’s a thrilling thriller with heart and a social conscience, but that’s what makes a Wanda Morris novel so irresistible.

Morris is already hard at work on a fourth novel. “This time I wonder why we are not putting children at the top of our priorities,” she says. “I don’t just want to entertain with my books. I hope they will somehow help someone in their real life.

Wanda M. Morris. In conversation with Mary Kay Andrews for the book launch of “What You Leave Behind,” presented by the Georgia Center for the Book. 7 p.m. June 18. Free but registration required. Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St., Decatur. georgiacenterforthebook.org.

Additional events:

1 p.m. June 22. Free. FoxTale Bookstore, 105 E. Main St., Woodstock. foxtalebookshoppe.com

7 p.m. June 26. $5. Atlanta History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta. www.atlantahistorycenter.com