Gray Mountain

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Grisham, John, Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / Legal / Grisham, John
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Grisham, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Grisham, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / Legal / Grisham, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / Legal / Grisham, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / Legal / Grisham, John	4-week checkout	Due 04-04-2024

"The Great Recession of 2008 left many young professionals out of work. Promising careers were suddenly ended as banks, hedge funds, and law firms engaged in mass lay-offs and brutal belt tightening. Samantha Kofer was a third year associate at Scully & Pershing, New York City's largest law firm. Two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, she lost her job, her security, and her future. A week later she was working as an unpaid intern in a legal aid clinic deep in small town Appalachia. There, for the first time in her career, she was confronted with real clients with real problems. She also stumbled across secrets that should have remained buried deep in the mountains forever" -- from author's web page.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

so so submitted by leenajong on July 7, 2015, 10:30am It's more like a documentary. So so to read.

Not his best but gets a little better submitted by pk on July 10, 2017, 10:01am This is not one of Grisham's best. In the beginning, especially, it reads like a lecture. The dialog is very stilted and is obviously there to inform the reader about the primary issue of the novel, the coal industry in Appalachia and the problems surrounding it: moutaintop removal (strip mining) and how it affects the environment, black lung disease and other cancers caused by the coal industry. It also touches on a secondary issue: that justice for poor people looks different than for the rest of America. These are both interesting and important topics, but they seem boring in the first parts of Grisham's novel.

As it goes on, the novel improves, with fewer lectures and more of what we expect from Grisham - the legal thriller, set in the courtrooms of coal country. It is still not up to par with his better novels. The main character is not all that interesting, but it is her story that we are reading. The rest of the characters were not well developed. Even the "better" dialog in the second half of the book felt somewhat contrived. So not one of his best.

Grisham obviously wanted to bring attention to the issues of Appalachia, but didn't do it very well. If you want to learn more about the issues of the coal industry and enjoy nonfiction, please check out Coal River by Michael Schnayerson. For more about the justice system and the poor, look at Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Both are available from AADL and each are amazing nonfiction books about their topic.