Gray Mountain by John Grisham, 384 pages

This is a John Grisham novel that deals with the issue of Mountain Top Removal coal mining.  If you are a fan of big business, don't read this book.  It will just irritate you.  On the other hand, if you don't mind considering that big business might deem their bottom line more important than say, the people living in the communities where they do business, then sit down and enjoy the story.

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer is a hotshot young lawyer working in the real estate department of a mega law firm in New York City.  Samantha loses her job as a result of the financial crash and is told if she interns for a non-profit agency for one year she will keep her health insurance and have the prospect of returning to the firm.  Samantha ends up working for Legal Aid in Brady, Virginia, deep in Appalachia.

There she learns that she can truly assist people in need and she's darned good in a courtroom.  She also gets involved in some pretty nasty business involving coal companies, environmental disasters and black lung disease.

My beef with this book is that many of the story lines were not resolved.  I hope that means that John Grisham will return to Samantha and Brady, Virginia in another book.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham 368 pages

In this, his latest book, John Grisham has taken on the strip mining companies and it is not pretty! Imagine, a pristine mountain in the Appalachians, colorful trees, lots of animals, just completely destroyed. The top sliced off to get to the vein of coal underneath. Trees, dirt, debris just pushed off into the valley. Workers' unions busted, miners dying because of too much coal dust in their lungs, their benefits denied. Rules are broken, regulations ignored, and communities divided. Bribes, corruption, you name it. Into this scenario lands Samantha Kofer. Samantha was born and bred to be a big time New York attorney. Both her parents are attorneys and she has been slaving away for several years now at a huge firm in New York. Then the bottom falls out and she is sent to a small village in the Appalachian Mountains to work pro bono at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic. Samantha has never even been inside a court room, but she learns quickly that even small towns have their big secrets and litigations soon turns deadly. Will Samantha high tail in back to the big city or stick around to "help real people with real problems"? You will have to read to find the answer to that one!