John Grisham

Dear Yearbook committee,

I received your invitation to the class reunion of the UM graduating class of 1981. I am overjoyed to see you all again, and I also accept your invitation to speak at the opening ceremony. As per your request of an autobiography, I wrote a short synopsis of what I feel has affected my writing the most. Hopefully, this will fit in well enough with your scheme for the reunion book. I hope you enjoy.

Each one of us has a different road to take, and what we do before and after we make our decisions determine whom we are. So, I hope that I can assist you in assessing me and my writings through this paper, and, thus, I can help you see not only me, John Grisham the writer, but also me, John Grisham the man.

I was borne in Jonesboro, Arkansas on February 8th, 1955 (www.randomhouse.com/features/grisham/). My family was relatively large, and, unfortunately for us, we were rather poor, but we were never really knowledgeable about it. We were always happy, bouncing, and hyper children. We wouldn't stay in one town for a large amount of time. We would go to multiple towns for my father, who was in search of a stable carpentry job. At each stop, we would set our valuables down wherever we may be staying and then my mother would take us to the local library. We'd each get our own library card and 3 or 4 books (Pringle 1). Our education came before everything else in my parents' eyes.

Ultimately, we settled in a little town in Mississippi. I didn't really care for writing very much, but my real passion was baseball. Education didn't really rank high on my list, despite my parents best efforts. One of my language arts teachers later said that she saw promise in me but I didn't want to develop it. I would occasionally read classic authors. My personal favorite was John Steinbeck.

After high school, I then went to Mississippi State and attempted to become a professional baseball player. After I realized that I didn't have what it took to make it in professional baseball got a degree in accounting (Jebb 1). I then married my sweetheart Renee Jones from my hometown in Southaven, Mississippi. We had two children who are now 20(Ty) and 18(Shea) and bought a wonderful house on the outskirts of Southaven. After we settled in, I went back to school at Oxford at University of Mississippi. It was there, in 1981, I got my law degree (Pringle 1)

I started a 1-man firm in Southaven. Starting with criminal law, I took a couple of cases. My first murder case was rather intense in itself. My defendant shot his wife's lover 6 times in the head. We pleaded self-defense, considering the victim shot the defendant with a .22 caliber pistol (even though the round bounced off the defendant's chest)(Pringle 2) I started taking civil cases as well.

Ultimately, I found law to be boring. I often found myself dosing off and finding myself sitting next to a person who I didn't like representing them in cases that were ultimately a waste of time. So during slow periods, I called a friend of mine to make an unscheduled vacation (I told my wife I was going to New York to file some paperwork on this particular occasion). It was here that I began my first real attempt at writing. As my college friend and I entertained ourselves by sitting in on court cases, we happened upon the most striking case I have ever heard. A white girl was raped and beaten by a rather large and intimidating man. The defense had to call their last witness, and they called the victim. It was by far the greatest display of human emotion I have ever seen, and as I watched, I thought to myself, "What would I do if I was that child's father? How would I handle it?" Instantly, I developed a plot for a story. It was too good and I had to write it down (Pringle 26). On what legal notepaper I had, I started scribbling down notes to, from and during our little trips to a farmhouse in Pennsylvania. These notes I later organized, and finally produced my first, and most powerful in my opinion, book, A Time to Kill.

I made the setting of the story a little county named Ford, where the population was 74% white. Two men named Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard are known as the two rednecks that have no socially redeeming value. After getting drunk, they kidnap a young girl named Tonya Hailey. They drink and rape her all night long, and afterwards, they leave her for dead. However, they suspect that she isn't dead because "Niggers generally don't die after kicking, beating, and raping (Pringle 26)." The offenders are caught. Carl Lee Hailey, Tonya's father, discovers what happened to Tonya and knows exactly what he should do. The novel tracks his every move up to the point where the prisoners are being transferred outside to a vehicle. This is where Carl Lee takes his fatal shots at Billy Ray and Pete. From this point on, the focus of the novel is Carl Lee's trial.

As the novel progresses, we see all the parts of a real hearing: Preliminary hearing, bail hearing, Grand Jury deliberation, arraignment, Hearing for motions, and then the trial. I felt the need to do this, because most novels don't dive into all aspects of law. I also felt compelled, because I am known for my legal expertise and accurate portrayal of courts (Gale). Our hero is Jake Brigance, a wise "street lawyer" who is proud of whom he is. He is glad to defend the average person who is in need of help, inverse of the big firms who support the big clients (Jebb 4265). I mostly modeled Jake after myself at the time; a young, handsome lawyer who may not get paid a lot, but tries as hard as he can to win. However, anyone who has experience in law can tell you that it is a very dirty business. I know this just as most of the law profession knows. Therefore, I never portray my characters as completely wholesome. Jake does anything he can to win. He hires a psychiatrist to say that Carl Lee could have been temporarily insane at the time, which is a well-known lie. He also attempts to bribe potential jurors whose names come from a list he illegally obtained.

Even though Jake may seem bad, Jake and Carl Lee's foes are far worse. The lead antagonist in this story is the District Attorney. Progressively more evil than Jake, the D.A. eventually becomes a suspect for leaking information to the reborn K.K.K. resistance about the case. These hints make it a possibility that the D.A. is completely corrupt. The K.K.K. is also just as evil; threatening jurors and attempting to bomb the house of Jake Brigance. This hinted that the D.A. could be as evil as the K.K.K. itself. Jake + the antagonists aren't the only dishonest principles in this novel. The book