Major Literary Hits That Started As Self-Published Titles

John Grisham was a young lawyer sitting in a Mississippi courtroom when testimony in a deeply disturbing case gave him the question that would lead to his first novel. He began wondering what might happen if the father of a violently attacked child took the law into his own hands. In A Time to Kill, Carl Lee Hailey kills the two white men accused of assaulting his 10-year-old daughter, Tonya, and defense attorney Jake Brigance must represent him in a community already shaped by racial hatred. Grisham does not offer readers a comfortable distance.