Doubleday, 368 pp.
In Grisham’s tale, attorney Samantha loses her job with a prestigious New York law firm during the 2008 financial crisis. With nothing better on the horizon, she goes to work in a legal aid office in coal country – western Virginia, that is. There she learns of the evils of strip mining, mountaintop removal and black lung disease. Outraged, Samantha teams up with crusading environmental activists who fight back in unorthodox ways.
Readers of Grisham’s past work will recognize one of his favorite themes: small-time lawyers struggle heroically against big, bad corporations who run roughshod through people’s lives. Throw in some colorful rural characters, vicious meth dealers and a rogue lawyer, and you’ve got another sure-fire page turner. I read most of this book on a plane to and from the east coast, and wasn’t bored for a moment.
What drew me to it? Simple: I was seeking local color. The novel takes place largely in what Grisham terms “Appalachia.” I lived and worked in the region for seven years. Our western Pennsylvania town had its heyday 100 years ago, when the steel mills and glass factories were thriving. So were the coal mines, which provided the fuel both industries (and the electric utilities) needed. Nowadays most of the mines in western Pennsylvania are closed, but the evidence of them is all around if you know where to look, in place names, coal patch hamlets and the orange water that seeps out of abandoned mines.
My fondness for the region is perhaps the source of my issue with this book: it contains too many sweeping statements as to how coal mining companies break every rule in the book. Surely they cannot all be as bad as he depicts them.
Links
Washington Post review
Kirkus review,
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