In 1984, at the De Soto County courthouse in Hernando,
Grisham heard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-yearold
rape victim. He decided to write a novel exploring
what would have happened if the girl’s father had
decided to take the law into his own hands and murder
his daughter’s attackers. A Time to Kill took him three
years to complete and although it was initially rejected
by a number of publishers, it was eventually bought by
Wynwood Press, which initiated a modest 5,000-copy
printing and published it in June of 1988. Grisham’s
next novel, The Firm, was one of the biggest hits of
1991, spending forty-seven weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list. The book’s success enabled him to focus on
writing.