“I motion that this case be dismissed,” Drew Jones, a character in Herman L. Jimerson’s debut book The Defender, says with authority before the judge.
Jones is not a high-powered attorney representing one of his many high-profile clientele. He is a 13-year-old speaking on his brother’s behalf because his mother couldn’t afford another attorney fee for Drew’s wayward sibling.
In the opening chapter of The Defender, author Herman L. Jimerson introduces his readers to Drew Jones’ passion for law by way of this flashback to an adolescent boy getting his first taste of victory in the courtroom.
While cute and compelling, the situation seems the least plausible among all The Defender’s fictionalized accounts of Jimerson’s nearly 25-year legal career.
Surprisingly, the entire incident was completely true.
“She was still paying for another attorney from a previous incident, so she sent me with him to Division 26 downtown,” Jimerson said in his Clayton law office.
“He looked up, he looked around then he looked down,” Jimerson said laughing about the judge’s reaction to the boy’s statement. “And he said, ‘You take your brother over to the prosecutor’s office and we will dismiss it.’”
From that point on, the teenaged Jimerson was the de facto community counsel and ultimately became a true defender who would establish a lucrative private practice. All would serve as the foundation for The Defender.
“It’s real,” Jimerson said of his book. “It’s fictional, but it’s real. Every case is a case I had something to do with. “
Jimerson will be holding his first official reading, discussion and signing for The Defender next week at Left Bank Books.
“The book is a testament to young people who have dreams and want to become something and realize that they don’t have to follow the line of succession of what somebody else thinks they should be,” Jimerson said.
“Go for something more. If you work for something more, even if you realize that something more is challenging, even if that something more is not always what it appears to be – that’s the gist of the book.”
Unlike the stories of writer’s block, defeat, rejection and ultimate salvation after falling into the right hands, Jimerson’s experience with writing his first novel reads like a fairytale itself.
He began writing the book on vacation, and in 30 days it was complete. A publisher snatched him up relatively quickly.
“Like childbirth, everybody suffers the process,” Jimerson said. “I guess I delivered more easily, if you will, than someone else – but I went through the process.”
Jimerson’s “process” included having publishers disappointed because he was not “the black John Grisham.”
“It’s hard shopping a book about the legal system,” Jimerson said. “Because if you market to the publishers and it’s not John Grisham, they are pushing you away because that’s what sells.”
But while he steers clear of Grisham’s take on the legal literature genre, Jimerson promises that The Defender will be just as thrilling and compelling as the man who is credited for creating the niche.
“When you get into the book, you’ll see a lot of corruption and people that you think are right that are not right and the people that you think are wrong are right,” Jimerson said.
“You see a lot of good and evil in everybody, and I think that those things are always relevant and timely.”
As he works full-time with his law firm, Jimerson is also moving forward with his career as a writer. He recently completed his second novel Foreclosure and has begun working on a third, Altar Boys.
Just as when he was a small boy in a big courtroom – actually, even before his defining career moment as a future attorney– it was the spirit of youthful optimism and fearlessness that drove and motivated Jimerson towards establishing himself as an author.
“In 5th grade I told my best friend that I wanted to be a writer,” Jimerson said. “And he reminded me of that when the book came out. He said, ‘You did it. You told me you would.’”
Herman L. Jimerson will sign and discuss The Defender at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 11 at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid. For more information about the signing, call (314) 367-6731. For more information about Jimerson Law Firm, P.C., call (314) 862-0069.
