John Grisham, an attorney in Mississippi, was in court one day when he heard the testimony of a 12-year old rape victim. Her testimony allowed his mind to wonder what would happen if her father killed the rapist. The result of his musings was his first novel, A Time To Kill. It took him three years to write it and it was not very widely received because of the subject matter.
Fortunately, for the entertainment industry, Grisham did not give up. He continued working as an attorney while working on his next book, The Firm, which went on to be the best selling book of 1991. His career took off, and eventually readers turned back to his first novel, A Time to Kill. Years later, Warner Bros. bought the screen rights to the book and made the movie, which starred Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson and Sandra Bullock. Big names for a book that only 5, 000 copies were originally printed.
Before I critique the book any further, I will give you a brief plot synopsis, so that my comments will make a little more sense. I will not give away the ending for those who have not read this book.
The story takes place in Clanton, Mississippi. A 10-year old black girl is raped by two white guys who are drinking and on drugs. They hurt the little girl so bad that she would never be able to have children, and then they dump her at the roadside as if she were garbage.
The two men, showing absolutely no remorse, are apprehended by the police and put in jail. The little girls father, Carl Lee, is a good family man, who has served his country during the Vietnam War. He was racked with grief over what these two horrible men did to his baby girl, and he knew that the chances of two white men serving time over the rape of a black girl in Mississippi were very small. So he decided to take justice into his own hands. As the two rapists are being led to the courthouse for their court hearing, Carl Lee shows up with an M-16 and shoots them dead, right there on the courthouse steps.
A young, struggling attorney, Jake Brigance, decides to defend Carl Lee for the murder charges that Carl Lee now faces. The town is divided; half the town wants to pin a medal on Carl Lee and the other half think he should be punished severely. Race relations, which are already bad, get worse. The case makes national headlines and bus loads of people show up to protest for one side or the other. The Ku Klux Klan begins burning crosses, and friends and neighbors start choosing sides, and more people die. Everyone thinks Brigance, a white man, is totally crazy for taking this case, but he feels that Carl Lee deserves a fair trial. So he puts his career on the line to defend Carl Lee.
A Time To Kill is my favorite of Grisham’s books. Even though the subject matter is dark and violent, Grisham’s telling of the story pulls you in and makes you re-examine your own beliefs and values. There are several important issues addressed in this story. The first issue is of race and how the American court system discriminates based on race. The second issue is of vigilante justice; and whether it is ever really justified. Other issues addressed were bigotry, the death penalty, and also responsibility of the media. (Grisham wrote this story about 10 years before the circus, I mean trial, of O.J. Simpson, but the similarities are there.)
During the first part of the book, the chapters describing the rape of this unfortunate little girl, of her being reunited with her family, and the trauma and grief of her family, I cried through every page. A few pages into it, I almost quit reading because it disturbed me so much. Grisham makes you feel the girls terror and then her familys grief. You almost can not help empathizing with Carl Lee for taking matters into his own hands.
I can not say that I have ever felt such strong emotions from reading a work of fiction before or since. Grisham has a way of telling a story that gets to the heart of the readers emotions. I saw the movie based on this book and really liked it, but it could not compare to the book, the written words evoked stronger emotions, at least for me.
Grisham is not afraid of taking on sensitive subjects and calling things as he sees them, even if his view isn’t the most popular. It has been amazing to me that he can portray the community he lives in so darkly, confronting the worst in people and their beliefs, and still be as popular as he is. In his later book, The Chamber, Grisham takes on the death penalty issue by evoking sympathy and understanding for a man convicted and sentenced to die for bombing a Jewish building and killing several children (for those of you in other countries: the death penalty is highly supported by the people in southern states).
The courtroom drama in A Time To Kill was riveting and the story was very suspenseful. I thought Grisham did an excellent job of portraying life in a small, southern town, including the attitudes and beliefs of the people. I have lived in the south my entire life and while racial prejudice has gotten better, we still have a long way to go. I have personally witnessed acts of hostility and violence very similar to Grisham’s descriptions and maybe that is why I reacted so strongly to his words.
I highly recommend A Time To Kill. It is well written, suspenseful, and thought provoking. It can, however, be upsetting and graphic.