For Grisham, a time to remember

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2009 | by Dennis Moore

HERNANDO, Miss. -- John Grisham's legal pad was blank and his knees like putty as he approached the judge's bench. Just a few months out of law school in the early 1980s, he had made every rookie mistake imaginable in his first murder trial and now had to give closing arguments.

The judge put his hand over the microphone and asked Grisham whether he needed to vomit.

"I left for the restroom, and I did what I had to do. And I came back and I apologized to the jury for just being there, for even going to law school," Grisham says with the humor that comes from hindsight.

But he won the case.

Earlier this month, Grisham, 54, approached that same bench for the first time in about 20 years with considerably more confidence, no longer a practicing...