Gray Mountain by John Grisham

"Gray Mountain" by John Grisham. This book is published by Hachette India And Hodder & Stoughton in 2014 and has 416 pages.

Despite being graduate of Ivy league law school and working as associate in a high profile law firm, Samantha is laid off after Lehman Brothers goes down. She decides to work as legal associate in Braidy, a small town in the south, in coal county. She hates trials. In Braidy, she meets Donovan, a handsome, brilliant, dashing and reckless lawyer and his brother and side kick Jeff. She also comes across people in need, the meth addicts, black lung cases and rape of mother nature by coal mining companies.

Will Samantha like her new job? Can she adjust to the slow life? Will there be a romance? Will she take help from her high flying father or powerful mother? Will she return?

Author has portrayed blatant abuse of mother nature by strip mining for coal. Strip mining is a process of shaving off a mountain top and extracting coal. How powerful coal companies steamroll the laws, regulations & miners and how a number of miners suffer from black lungs. Black lung is a situation where fine coal dust is deposited in lungs causing breathing problems and eventual death. Once coal dust enters lung there is no way to remove it.

It's a fight between rich-poor, powerful-weak and have's-have not's. Here it is presented from lawyers perspective.

The story is good and evenly paced. The twist in the tale is predictable. The story shows that there are also a few lawyers who do not run only after money and power.

Experienced readers can guess the end of this book by the time they have read 20-25%. So then on its not 'what happens' but but 'how does it happen'.

It's a good book. Read if you are interested in lawyers.