In one of his numerous popular legal thrillers set in the American South, John Grisham brings his considerable capacity for anger to bear on Big Coal in Appalachia. There, he zeroes in on the twin tragedies of strip mining and black lung disease. Grisham really, really doesn’t like big companies that ride roughshod over their employees, the communities where they work, and the environment, all for the sake of making a buck. And he likes them even less when their actions are downright illegal.
A New York transplant and a home-grown legal champion
The Gray Mountain story is viewed through the eyes of Samantha Kofer, who has suddenly found herself out of a job in New York as a third-year associate with the biggest law firm in the world. Transplanted to Coal Country in Appalachia, Samantha takes up a job as a legal intern with a small-town legal aid service catering to the victims of black lung disease, a methamphetamine epidemic, and the ravages of rural poverty. There, a courageous, risk-taking plaintiff’s attorney named Donovan Gray has made it his life’s work to exact revenge on Big Coal for destroying his childhood home and his family and driving his young mother to suicide.
Gray Mountain by John Grisham (2014) 386 pages ★★★★☆
Trademark Grisham
Gray Mountain is trademark Grisham, with attractive if flawed major characters, corporate wrong-doing on a massive scale, and minor characters tossed about like so much chaff through the machinations of evil corporations and the lackeys who labor in their service as attorneys. The FBI, too, becomes subject to Grisham’s scorn, its agents depicted as “goons” and bullies with little more honor than the corporate attorneys who are the standout bad guys in the story.
Though it’s a compelling read—and a great introduction to the damage done by Big Coal—Gray Mountain is far less satisfying than Grisham’s best work, some of it many years behind him. This book reads more like the beginning of a trilogy or a series, ending as it does with less than full resolution of the plot.
About the author
John Grisham needs no introduction to American readers. As the author of more than 40 adult novels and seven for young adults, two collections of short stories, and four nonfiction books, his work has topped the bestseller lists for decades. Ten have been adapted to film, and six to television. He is one of the world’s bestselling authors.
Grisham was born in 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He earned a BS from Mississippi State University and a JD from the University of Mississippi Law School. He is married and the father of two children. Grisham’s net worth is allegedly in the range of $400 to $500 million, having sold somewhere between 300 and 400 million copies of his books.
For related reading
However, even Grisham running on three cylinders, or two, is a pleasure. You can see that in my reviews of four of his earlier novels: Sycamore Row, The Racketeer, The Litigators, and The Confession.
This is one of 17 fascinating courtroom dramas.
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