COMMENTARY: Grisham’s morality tale: The unbearable lightness of leaving

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is author of “Turn Toward the Wind” and publisher of Religion News Service. She is the mother of two boys.) UNDATED _ Have you ever felt like your wonderful career is turning into a dead-end job? Do you wonder what happened to the romance in your marriage? […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is author of “Turn Toward the Wind” and publisher of Religion News Service. She is the mother of two boys.)

UNDATED _ Have you ever felt like your wonderful career is turning into a dead-end job? Do you wonder what happened to the romance in your marriage? Are there days when the relentless onslaught of bills, complaints and hassles get the best of you?


Imagine, for a moment, leaving it all behind. Walking away without a trace and starting a new life from scratch. No more phone calls, faxes or e-mails _ just you and whoever you want to be.

If the notion strikes you as intriguing or attractive, you’re not alone. It has, in fact, become something of an all-American fantasy.

Psychiatrists and ministers see it as a growing trend. The Rev. Craig Barnes, senior pastor of The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., says,”It comes up all the time. People’s lives aren’t working out the way they planned, and they can’t straighten things out. They think that starting over again can make things right.” It is this very fantasy that John Grisham explores in his new book,”The Partner”(Doubleday). Leaving his conniving law partners, cheating wife, illegitimate child and bloated, complicated life, Patrick Lanigan ends up in Brazil living simply and frugally.

But he is not living happily ever after, partially because he”borrowed”$90 million that his partners had illegally gained and, therefore, has a variety of shady characters tracking him down.

Finding Lanigan and the money is what creates the suspenseful plot; but that is not the entire story. Grisham’s book is a morality tale, exploring the price we pay for our modern-day notions of success.”Be careful what you wish for”may have been a more appropriate title for the book.

Even though Grisham never claims to create more than a”good read,”his books often have moral lessons and are remarkably devoid of sex and profanity. There are bad guys in all of his books, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy exploring their evil ways.

Grisham seems more intrigued with how good is defined and what makes a hero behave heroically. In”The Partner,”he seems especially interested in choices and consequences and the price even good people pay for bad decisions.


Craig Barnes is especially interested in the topic, too, and not just because of the angst he sees in his parishioners. His own father disappeared when Barnes was a teen. He never contacted his family again.”I’ve come to grips with it,”Barnes says, but he has talked and written about the toll such actions take on those who are left behind.

John Grisham is himself a religious man, explaining in an interview with Christianity Today that he teaches Sunday school and is active in his Southern Baptist church.

It was, in fact, during a church mission trip to a remote area of Brazil that he came upon”a great place to disappear and not be found,”he said recently on the”Today”show.

When he learned an American had indeed hidden away in the area for years, his story began to take shape.

Grisham says he’s quite happy with his life in Mississippi, but Lanigan, his fictional hero, claims,”At some point in life, everybody thinks of walking away. Life’s always better on the beach or in the mountains. Problems can be left behind.” But the moral of”The Partner”is that problems can’t really be left behind.”Why can’t a man have more than one life? Where was it written that you couldn’t start over? And over?”Lanigan wonders rhetorically.

Grisham, the novelist, finds it an intriguing flirtation. But Grisham, the Sunday school teacher, would probably respond that the answer is written in the Bible.”Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows,”says Galatians 6:7. It is a common text; one a Southern Baptist like Grisham would know well.


And perhaps it is because of Grisham’s spiritual beliefs that he has a hard time letting even a good guy like Patrick Lanigan walk away from all of his troubles and run off with a beautiful woman to create a wonderful new life.”The Partner”has a surprise ending that may do for escapism what”Fatal Attraction”did for adultery. The wages of sin make for intriguing fictional denouement.

Says Craig Barnes,”The fantasy of leaving is really a modern notion of pseudo-redemption. When things aren’t working, we think we can fix them by walking away.”But true redemption comes from confessing that life hasn’t worked out as we planned. After confessing to the loss of our dreams, we are freed to transform our old life through faith instead of running away and trying to create something new.” Although that sentiment may not be a sexy theme for popular fiction, John Grisham might say,”Amen”, to its spiritual truth.

MJP END BOURKE

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