Gray Mountain

Hugely popular John Grisham (http://www.johngrisham.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grisham) has used his professional experience in law and politics to great effect in his fiction. Many of his works including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client and A Painted House have made it onto film and television. In this novel from October 2014 Grisham offers a new hero – Samantha Kofer. The summary is as follows:
the year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track – until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the “lucky” associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back. In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to “help real people with real problems.” For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, conceals some big secrets. Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly. All very John Grisham and if that’s what you like, you’ll like this.

 

384 pages in Hodder & Stoughton

First published 23 October 2014

ISBN 978-1444765618

 

John Grisham

 

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