Reply #7: FWIW ...

[RoyGBiv]

I'm going to post a review of _The Innocent Man_ in a few days, written from the perspective of someone who knows more than a little about the community and events in question. (A lot of stuff came back to me as I read the book I had forgotten I had forgotten, and some things in the book simply defy my understanding as someone who witnessed some of the things that took place.)

In brief summary, I think this is a good book. I do not understand why Grisham wrote it in the context of non-fiction, by which I mean I have come to expect good, narrative, fictional prose from him, and that good, narrative, fictional prose remains. I found enough glaring errors, both of omission and perspective, in the first chapter to fill another book, things anyone who even researched the rather thin and vacant Ada newspaper would have known were off base at least. It's the little things that bug me really, such as portraying Ada as an archetype that disappeared 30 years before the events in the book took place. I could narrow down where he got certain tidbits of information (or more precisely perceptions) to one or two people who have always, as apart of their job description basically, portrayed those ideas for "outsiders" who ask questions. In investigating a travesty of justice, Grisham was in some respects duped into cementing convenient lies while in the process of exposing a certain level of truth, a level that was allowed to be known.

As just one brief, mostly unimportant, example, I was born in that town in 1969. Neither I in any of the homes I occupied after moving out on my mother's house (one of which was 15 miles from the nearest neighbor aside from my landlord) nor my parents the entire time I grew up ever even conceived of the possibility of not locking their doors at night or when they left the house, yet Grisham focuses on this "Mayberry" style of trust as "typical." That's an overused, nonsensical archetype that simply does not have any relation to reality. In other words, Grisham introduced some of the tools of the novelist in a book he claims is non-fiction. In the context of a novel I would have had few problems with the characterization, not only with the example mentioned but with a stream of others. The book is both fiction and non-fiction. The events, in summary, are real. The story of an innocent man sentenced to death is real. The corruption is real. (He pretty well nailed Bill Peterson, about whom I've written on this very forum without naming him.) The details aren't necessarily.

As a more concrete example, I attended a church mentioned in this book during the years portrayed in the book. Grisham seems to be relying on invented stories about what took place there. From the age of 0 to 14 or so, on Sunday and Wednesday, I attended that church and never saw anything like some of the events he describes. Several of those years cross with years Grisham was supposedly portraying.

_Dreams of Ada_ is actually a bit better in this regard. (The "convenience store culture" characterization is about the most accurate thing I've ever seen written describing a real, small Oklahoma town.) I have a very big problem with the author's major premise, which almost unquestioningly accepts the rather absurd notion that Tommy Ward had a dream that he killed Donna Denise Haraway and for whatever reason decided to go to the police station, and for no other reason than him being disturbed by a dream, told a cop about it and for some other reason suddenly found himself arrested for having that "dream." Robert Mayer, the author, was an acquaintance/friend of the Ward family and unfortunately took a lot of the information they offered as uncontested fact. He, like Grisham based on an initial reading, got the conclusions right for many of the wrong reasons, perhaps because he and/or they spent their time talking to the wrong people.

I got the impression both authors got a little too close to the "accused" to be considered truly impartial judges.