The Rainmaker by John Grisham: A Full Summary and Guide
What it is about
The Rainmaker is John Grisham's sixth novel, published in 1995 and set in Memphis, Tennessee. In the trade, a rainmaker is a lawyer who wins spectacular cases and brings in enormous sums in damages. The book's hero dreams of becoming one. He gets his wish, though not in any form he would have chosen.
Rudy Baylor is a third-year law student at Memphis State, broke and weeks from graduation. During an outreach session for a class in elder law, he picks up two clients. The first is Miss Birdie, an eighty-year-old woman who wants her will rewritten. The second is Dot and Buddy Black, a poor couple whose son Donny Ray has leukaemia. Donny Ray has an identical twin brother who is a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant. The procedure should have been covered by the family's insurer, Great Benefit Life Insurance. The claim was denied.
Then Rudy's own life falls apart. The firm that offered him a job is bought out by Tinley Britt, a powerful Memphis outfit that happens to represent Great Benefit. No job, no money, no prospects. He ends up working for J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone, a successful ambulance chaser with corrupt business dealings on the side. To earn his keep, Rudy is sent to the local hospital to find accident victims and sign them to personal injury suits. The novel follows him from that humiliating start into a courtroom where he takes on an insurance giant almost alone.
The main characters
Rudy Baylor narrates. He is young, untested and has not yet passed the bar when the story begins, which is precisely the point. Everything he learns, he learns on the job and usually the hard way.
Deck Shifflet is his mentor, a former insurance assessor who holds a law degree but has failed the bar exam six times. Deck's ethics are flexible. His instincts about insurance companies are excellent, and the pairing of the idealistic graduate and the hustler gives the book much of its humour.
Dot Black is the client who matters. Her anger at Great Benefit is the engine of the case, and her grief gives it weight. Donny Ray, dying through the first half of the book, is the reason any of it is happening.
Kelly Riker is a teenage patient Rudy meets in the hospital cafeteria while studying for the bar. She is recovering from injuries inflicted by her husband, Cliff. The two fall for each other quickly, but Kelly will not file for divorce because she believes Cliff would kill her. Rudy stays in touch after she is discharged and keeps pressing her to get out.
Two judges shape the trial. The first is lazy and incompetent, openly sympathetic to Great Benefit, and preparing to dismiss the case on no valid legal ground. He dies in his sleep. His replacement is a liberal African-American star attorney who tells Great Benefit plainly that the case is going forward and that their patron is not coming back.
How it ends (spoilers from here)
Stone's firm is about to be raided by police and the FBI, so Rudy and Deck set up on their own and take the Black case with them. Donny Ray dies before the trial begins. In discovery, Rudy uncovers the scheme at the heart of the book: Great Benefit denied every claim it received, valid or not, playing the odds that policyholders would never consult a lawyer.
The jury awards $50.2 million. It is a sensational verdict, front page news, and it makes Rudy famous overnight. Days later, Great Benefit declares bankruptcy. Its parent corporation has smuggled the assets out of the country, leaving an empty shell. The Blacks receive nothing. Rudy receives no fee. Dot takes what satisfaction she can from believing she put the company out of business.
Meanwhile Cliff beats Kelly again during the trial. Rudy moves her into a safe house for abused women and files for divorce. When they return to her old flat for her things, Cliff ambushes them with a baseball bat. Rudy wrestles it away and fatally wounds him. Kelly tells Rudy to leave and lets herself be charged with manslaughter. Cliff's family demand prosecution, but after Rudy explains what the grand jury would see about Cliff's brutality, the prosecutor files no charges against either of them. With no cases left and Cliff's relatives threatening him, Rudy leaves Memphis with Kelly. He is done with the law and wants to teach. She wants to go to college.
The themes
Justice and the law are not the same thing here, and the gap between them is the book's real subject. Rudy wins. The system still fails his clients, because a corporation with offshore structures can empty itself out faster than a court can reach it.
Class runs through everything. The Blacks are poor and were sold a policy by a company counting on their ignorance. Tinley Britt has unlimited resources. Rudy has Deck and a photocopier.
Corruption appears at every level, from Bruiser Stone's rackets to a judge who has clearly chosen a side. Power, in this book, means being able to absorb a loss that would destroy anyone else.
Why it still matters
The Rainmaker takes a fight that millions of people recognise, an ordinary family against an insurer that says no, and makes it a courtroom thriller without pretending the courtroom fixes it. The insurance denial scheme Grisham describes, refusing claims as policy and waiting to see who lawyers up, has kept the novel uncomfortably current. It is also one of his funniest books, largely thanks to Deck. Readers who want procedural detail, a genuine underdog and an ending that refuses the easy payoff will find all three.
