Page 17 - Gears & Ears January 2015

Gears and Ears

Journal of the Rotary Club of Lake Buena Vista
Page 17
December 2014 January 2015
Page 17
This Month’s Book Review

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

John Grisham’s latest legal thriller focuses on a young female protagonist, a small Virginia town, and Big
Coal. After her promising Wall Street career had been snuffed out by the Great Recession, Samantha
Kofer had headed south, hoping that an unpaid one-year legal aid internship would be her ticket back.
She learns quickly that those twelve months will not be spent treading water. Instead, she is tossed
almost immediately into daunting courtroom battles, arousing the suspicions and then the threats of
locals who view her as a big-city intruder. A scintillating, cinematic page-turner that only Grisham could
have written.

Publishers Weekly
09/29/2014

Expect the expected in this tepid legal thriller from bestseller Grisham (Sycamore Row) that may be the
debut of a series character. When Wall Street law associate Samantha Kofer loses her job in the 2008
financial meltdown, her mega-firm offers her the prospect of a return to long hours and dull work after a
year’s furlough as an unpaid intern for a nonprofit organization. Despite the volunteer nature of such
work, Samantha discovers competition for the slots available fierce, and seizes the chance, after numerous
rejections, to work at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Va., population 2,200. In the Appalachian
coal town, Samantha finds herself a fish out of water in more senses than one. She needs to adjust to
living in a community with fewer residents than her old office building, as well as dealing with real people’s
problems rather than document review. Grisham movingly portrays the evils of Big Coal and the lives it
has ruined, and most readers will rapidly turn the pages, but the subtlety and full-blooded characters that
mark the author’s best work are sadly absent. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.