February Reviews: Gray Mountain, John Grisham

 

I enjoy John Grisham's books very much and I usually knock out a couple per year. I have read three so far in 2024, and his writing is clean, active, and very fluid. He is an excellent plotter and--for the most part--his characterization is keen and compels the reader into a sympathetic investment with the story.

Samantha Kofer is our protagonist in this legal thriller. She is one of the faceless minions in a large New York legal firm charged primarily with reading and revising huge, opaque real estate contracts. The Great Recession looms large in the opening passages of this story, however, and Kofer finds herself out on the street with few options as the firm cuts staff. Her only option is to take a free internship with a non-profit agency of firecracker lawyers in rural Appalachia. Their task? Securing settlements and benefits from big coal for the downtrodden, unskilled workers that toil in the mines under the specter of the dreaded black lung disease.

This book surges forward and Grisham's attention to detail on the ins and outs of the coal industry is admirable. As is the case with most of his books, the research is thorough and the legal tactics employed by big coal are both crushing and draconian. It's sad, really, so read about these small towns whose citizens have been used up and left for dead. Some of the miners have only worked in the mines for a few years before they develop the incurable disease, and that part of the story is heart-breaking.

While critics generally enjoyed the book, I found it a little light overall and thought that the tale needed a bit more exposition and some additional space to really breathe. As Kofer unravels the thread of a major lawsuit against a particularly aggressive mining company and their strong-arm tactics to level mountains and poison the groundwater, death, covert intimidation, and general mayhem ensue. It's interesting enough, to be sure, but the story feels rushed and the conclusion is short and a bit unsatisfying. It shares a kinship with the movie A Civil Action in the sense that there is no real hope for meaningful reform. The big take-away is that these large companies are above the law, and the human capital in rural America will be exhausted without any meaningful recourse.

This is a page-turner and an interesting read that most audiences will enjoy, but it lacks the moral gravitas of many of his better novels (I have read A Time to Kill three times, and still find it one of the best American novels of the last half century). I recommend it, but it's not in the same category as much of Grisham's production, and the other pair of books I have read by this wordsmith in the new year...