Scan barcode
A review by sarah_tellesbo
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
5.0
I’ve had approximately four million people tell me how great this book is since they found out I’d started reading it. And my partner has long recommended John Grisham’s work, though clearly I do things in my own (always stubborn) good time. There’s a right time for every book, and the right time for this one was now.
A brief synopsis of A Time to Kill: 1980′s Mississippi amidst a lot of racial tension. Carl Lee Hailey, a black man, kills the two white men responsible for unspeakable and unforgivable crimes against his ten year old daughter. Seeing the complexity of the case and hoping for a chance to both prove himself as a capable attorney and protect a man whom he perceives to be in the right, young Mississippi lawyer Jake Brigance steps up to the plate and risks everything in the process including the physical safety of himself and his family.
Here’s why I found this book particularly fascinating right now: a) At the beginning of July, I was selected to be a jury member for a long trial (that’s still going) and it’s been interesting to compare the literary experience with the real life experience of courtroom processes, and b) the non-fictional crime podcast I’ve been listening to also takes place in Mississippi and aims to highlight and unpack the complexities of institutionalized and long-embedded racism in our United States criminal justice system.
This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it whether you’re serving on a jury and listening to crime podcasts or not.
*Trigger warning: rape, racism/racist violence, racial slurs, violence.*
A brief synopsis of A Time to Kill: 1980′s Mississippi amidst a lot of racial tension. Carl Lee Hailey, a black man, kills the two white men responsible for unspeakable and unforgivable crimes against his ten year old daughter. Seeing the complexity of the case and hoping for a chance to both prove himself as a capable attorney and protect a man whom he perceives to be in the right, young Mississippi lawyer Jake Brigance steps up to the plate and risks everything in the process including the physical safety of himself and his family.
Here’s why I found this book particularly fascinating right now: a) At the beginning of July, I was selected to be a jury member for a long trial (that’s still going) and it’s been interesting to compare the literary experience with the real life experience of courtroom processes, and b) the non-fictional crime podcast I’ve been listening to also takes place in Mississippi and aims to highlight and unpack the complexities of institutionalized and long-embedded racism in our United States criminal justice system.
This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it whether you’re serving on a jury and listening to crime podcasts or not.
*Trigger warning: rape, racism/racist violence, racial slurs, violence.*