The Rainmaker

The book "The Rainmaker," by John Grisham is about the life of Rudy Baylor. Rudy Baylor is about to graduate from Memphis State Law School. He is in a small firm. He is getting a salary of about 30,000 dollars.His life is a pretty good one and he expects to get into the "big leagues" and make millions.

As fast as he had gotten the "good life" it vanished. So far, the only person he has ever loved has dumped him for an Ivy League graduate that she met years ago. He lost his only job and can't get another one because they are all taken. He's been evicted from his apartment. Rudy is having a horrible life. Now he is trying to find a job and make something out of his now meaningless life.

I feel that there lots of people in the world around us that have this sort of problem. It might not be the same one, but it could be similar. Right now, millions of people are unemployed and looking for jobs. These people will try whatever they can to get their life going again.

Cats Aren't the Only Ones With More Than One Life

In The Partner by John Grisham, Patrick Lanigan is having a horrible life. His wife is cheating on him. He has a child that he realizes isn't even his (from a blood test). People who he thought he could trust turn on him and cheat him out of millions of dollars. Patrick can't stand his life. He has a horrible life, a child he's supposed to love as a father, but isn't one, and he gets cheated out of millions of dollars. So what does he do? He kills himself, at night, in a car crash off the side of the road. The fire was so intense the only thing the people find is his ashes. Or so they thought.

In Patrick's "second" life, his name is Danilo Silva. He loses tons of weight and shaves his beard, looking nothing like before. It turns out that Patrick had faked his death. But why? To steal the money that he was cheated out of. But he doesn't only take his share. He takes the whole ninety million and runs. He runs to Brazil to hide, not spending any of the ninety million. There, 2 years later, he meets the woman of his dreams. Her name was Eva. After a few days, he finds her trustworthy enough to tell her about everything. He gives her the money and she hides it in banks around the world. She never betrays him. 2 years after that, the people who lost the ninety million found Patrick/Danilo. They tortured him and asked him where the money was. He didn't know since he gave it to Eva. Eventually the FBI came and arrested him.

Now that Danilo/Patrick is in custody, he is thinking about how if he could escape one more time. Live with Eva and the ninety million without ever being found. He starts thinking: Patrick is dead. Danilo has been captured. He starts thinking: Why you can't just start over? Why can't you have more than one life? So Patrick decides to press his luck one more time. To see how it all ends.

The Partner

John Grisham is a great author when it comes to criminal justice. I've read many books by him. They were all outstanding. For example, one series I read was the Theodore Boone series, by John Grisham. This was about a kid who was 13 years old and obsessed with the court. I thought this was a great book for me because it was about the justice system but it didn't get too complicated because it was in a 13 year old's head. Another book I read by Grisham was The Last Juror. This book had the same idea as the other book except it was more mature. The perspective of this character is from a man in his later twenties. The book I am reading right now is a different category all together.

Like I said before, the Boone series is from the point of view of a 13 year old. The Last Juror is from the view of a 27 year old man. The Partner is from the view of a dead person.
Or at least a guy who's supposed to be.
Patrick faked his own death so he could steal 96 million dollars from a pact that he was in before and getting cheated out of. In the other two books, the main characters had done nothing wrong. But, obviously, Patrick had done something wrong since he had been chased down after 4 years of running. But for some reason, Grisham has decided to defend this thief. I think I understand why. The people in the pact were vicious, money hungry people. Though Grisham is defending a criminal, he makes him look like a good guy.

These books aren't completely different, though. Grisham still manages to connect these books. These books are all about the court. They defend the most innocent person and prosecute the criminal. The Partner is a different story, like I explained. Grisham's books are complicated. The book is the court, and Grisham himself, is the judge.

"Am I Blue?"

In the short story, "Am I Blue?" by Bruce Coville, Vincent gets beaten up by a kid at his school because he thinks he is gay. The truth is that Vincent doesn't know. After getting beaten up, his fairy godfather, Melvin appears. Vincent doesn't know if he should trust the man but decides to talk to him. Melvin helps Vincent by talking to him and explaining to him that there are tons of straight people that believe that they don't know any gay people but really they are just hiding. Vincent started to change when he met Melvin and by the end of the story he is a different person.

In the beginning of the short story, Melvin is trying to hide from his problems like the bully, Butch Carrigan. Melvin appeared and started to teach him that it's okay to not know whether to know if he was gay or not. Melvin taught Vincent that there were lots of gay people in the world. This made Vincent feel better that he wasn't alone. When Vincent's fairy godfather appeared, Vincent got three wishes. One was wasted on his coffee. The other two were still untouched. At the end of the story, Vincent decided to use one of his wishes to turn every gay person in the US blue for a day. Vincent did this so that they would stop hiding and so the straight people would accept the fact that there are gay people in their lives. Vincent was a lot less afraid at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. He decided it was okay.

This story relates to the real world because there are lots of gay people hiding in the real world. Also, many people judge others by their appearances, like Butch did to Vincent. There are lots of people in the world that bully others based on their appearepances. You should never assume anything about anyone else because it could not be true and it could really hurt them.