About the Author:John Ray Grisham Jr. is an American novelist, attorney, politician, and activist, best known for his popular legal thrillers. His books have been translated into 42 languages and published worldwide.
Gray mountain is yet another legal thriller by John Grisham set the Appalachia, a coal mining county in Virginia. Samantha a third year legal associate in one of the top law firm is furloughed for year and works for legal clinic in Appalachia. The story is set in the year 2008 and the entire world hit hard by the recession and so is the firm Samantha worked for in New York have been giving pink slips or are being furloughed.
The legal aid clinic is run by Mattie and Annette, although Donovan(Trial lawyer) is also a board member and funds the clinic. The clinic provides free legal services to people who cannot afford to have a lawyer fighting for them in crisis situation. Most of the cases that they handle are divorces, abuse, sexual harassment, so on and forth. Samantha has never been kind of lawyer who have never fought cases, real cases in court. Being a city girl and from different background, she had her own doubts, if she would fit along with crowd in Brady, Appalachia.
Donovan a trail lawyer fights against the coal companies who not only destroy the mountains, its nature, but also affects the livelihood of the people. The water bodies are dumped with waste from the mining, mine workers who breathe in the polluted air have lungs severely affected. Although health affected mine workers can claim for their benefits from coal companies, they are denied and are not able fight in the court. Donovan has won quite a few cases against few coal companies, yet the fight was difficult. Donovan has erratic ways to gains evidence for his cases and is always on trouble with the coal companies. Hence he always has to be very careful. Samantha gets caught whirlwind of his world and his gang of lawyers.
Donovan has a solid evidence against one of the major coal companies which is run by Russians mob and are very dangerous. After the death of Donovan, Samantha, his brother Jeff have been followed and threatened by thugs who work for the coal company and want to get hold of the evidence before they handed over to government authorities. Jeff, Donovan’s brother has been living in shadows and somehow manages to give the hidden documents to another lawyer Mr London, a friend of Donovan, who is going to fight against the companies for justice
My Opinion: The story-line deals with malpractice of the coal companies, how it affects the environment and livelihood of the people in these areas, but the ending didn’t do justice. Samantha, the protagonist of the story, although being a lawyer who can bring a major change by fighting against injustice done by these companies, yet at every danger, she tried to evade away from it. She tries to run away from her responsibility and duck way from the situation rather than facing it with confidence and bring the coal companies down.
The ending could have been better and several questions were left un-answered. Hence. I would rate the book 3/5.
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