Gray Mountain, Grisham - B

                                                It is hard to believe that this is Grisham's 29th book, 25th if you only want to count the legal thrillers.  He has provided some memorable stories over the last twenty-three years.  This one falls a bit shy of the usual high bar.  A fourth-year associate loses her job in Manhattan as a consequence of the collapse of Lehman Bros. and, notwithstanding degrees from Georgetown and Columbia and a childhood in D.C. as the only child of two lawyers, Samantha Kofer takes a non-paying Legal Aid internship in rural southwestern Virginia two days after being furloughed. Grisham can still write, but this is not just the usual highly complex story, although it is the usual good v. evil drama. What it is is a thorough polemic tearing apart the coal industry for its abuse of the land, total disregard for the law, lack of ethics, domination of the political and legal institutions of the five states that mine coal in the region, and indifference to human suffering. He really goes after them. According to this novel, Big Coal never pays on the black lung cases. They just appeal and appeal until they have to pay, five to seven  years after the initial claim, when in all likelihood, the claimant is either at deaths door or has already crossed over. Black lung is completely untreatable and is depicted as an absolutely horrible way to go. Also, the companies never repair the strip-mined landscape because it's less expensive to not do so and instead, to pay some light fines. If the coal industry is half as bad as depicted here, its owners and mangers should  all be condemned to a life in underground mines.  Samantha and others in the legal community make a difference, take on Big Coal and appear to be on the road to living happily ever after.