Mercer Mann is the protagonist of the novel. She is a writer with one successful novel and a well-respected book of short stories. When she is introduced, Mercer is teaching in an adjunct capacity at University of North Carolina, but will be unemployed in two weeks at the end of the semester. She is, as she puts it, “basically homeless and unemployed and desperate to finish the book” (133). Mercer struggles with the typical obstacles that writers face, the largest of which are financial. Although her books sold respectably, they don’t make enough for her to live on, and the need to earn a living as a teacher has delayed her from writing her next novel, which is three years past deadline. Her financial precarity is one of the reasons that Elaine’s offer is so attractive, and Mercer takes it despite her misgivings about the ethics of the investigation.

Once she is on Camino Island, however, she finds herself unable to write, even in her ideal circumstances. In conversation with other writers on Camino Island, Mercer contemplates moving from literary to popular fiction and debates which genre she would write. Through Mercer’s fight to establish her writing career and the exploration of her options, John Grisham builds the theme of

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