BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: 10/21/2014; PUBLISHER: Doubleday, First edition; ISBN 978-0385537148; PAGES 384; Unabridged
Digital: Yes

*Audio: COPYRIGHT: 10/21/2014; ISBN: 9780385366564; PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; DURATION: 14:46:18; PARTS: 12; File Size: 425512 KB; Unabridged

Feature Film or tv: No

SERIES: No

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Samantha Kofer – Protagonist, Lawyer
Andy Grubman – Samantha’s boss
Karen Kofer – Samantha’s mother
Blythe – Samantha’s roommate
Marshall Kofer – Samantha’s father
Mattie Wyatt – Founder and lawyer at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic
Annette – lawyer at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic
Donovan Gray

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: I have decided to listen to all of Grisham’s books and this one was available.
What’s it about? A young lady, not long out of law school is working for “big law”—a corporation of lawyers in New York when the financial crises of 2008 strikes and she finds herself floundering – cut loose from the corporation and desperate for a place to land. Almost desperate anyway. She does come from a family of lawyers, and she’s finally got an opportunity to consider what she did and didn’t like about her former employer. She heads to a small town to interview for an unpaid internship and the story builds from there.
What did I think? Very good. This is one of John’s more didactic works, where there’s no getting around long explanations concerning the underbelly of Cole mining practices, but it’s all wrapped up in a great story, and besides; it’s interesting.
AUTHOR:
John Grisham:
From Wikipedia:
“Grisham, the second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham.[6] His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker.[9] When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.[6]
As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player.[8] As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe, Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him, and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm.
Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college.[1] He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House.[6] Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work".[10]
Through one of his father's contacts, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer.[11]
He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland.[6] Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree.[1] He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with a J.D. degree.[6]
After leaving law school, he participated in some missionary work in Brazil, under the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[12]”

NARRATOR:
Catherine Taber
From IMDb:
“Georgia native Catherine Taber made her feature film debut starring in the coming of age drama "The Girls' Room". Taber's performance in the film garnered critical praise from industry publications. Daily Variety hailed her performance as "winning, empathetic and intimate." Catherine can also be seen alongside Reese Witherspoon in the romantic comedy, Just like Heaven, as well as 2009's Curious George 2, 2008's Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the film that kicked off the series, and in numerous comedic and dramatic television appearances.
Catherine made her voice-acting debut playing Mission Vao in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. She has since appeared in some of the most popular science fiction and fantasy titles on the market including The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and X Men. Cat also plays the young Princess Leia in the award winning Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel, The Force Unleashed II. In 2012, Taber has returned to the Star Wars Universe to play Vette in the Star Wars: The Old Republic. Catherine was nominated for a NAViGaTR Award (National Academy of Video Game Testers and Reviewers) for her portrayal of Penelo in "Final Fantasy 12"
Hailed as a Geek Goddess amongst the sci fi, fantasy, and gaming communities, Catherine feels right at home in her current role of Padme Amidala in the critically acclaimed Cartoon Network television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
When this self-proclaimed sci-fi geek isn't living out her childhood dreams on set, she is giving back to her community. Catherine started the organization Games For Soldiers which accepts donations of video games and comic books that she sends to troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Publicist”

Catherine’s narration is perfect here!

GENRE:
Fiction; Suspense; Thriller

LOCATIONS:
Manhattan, New York; Brady, Virginia; Washington D.C.;

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (2008)

SUBJECTS:
Coal country; Appalachia; Coal Mining; Law; Lawyers;

DEDICATION:
“To the memory of Rick Hemba 1954-2013 So long, Ace”

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 2:
“I’m okay, Mom. I promise.” The last thing Samantha needed at that moment was her mother’s hovering presence and endless advice on what to do next.
“Is it a termination or some type of layoff?”
“The firm is calling it a furlough, a deal whereby we intern with a nonprofit for a year or two and keep our health benefits. Then, if things turn around, the firm will take us back without a loss of seniority”
“Sounds like a pathetic effort to keep you on a string.”
Thanks, Mom, for your typical bluntness. Karen went on, “Why don’t you tell those creeps to take a hike?”
“Because I’d like to keep my health insurance, and I’d like to know there might be the option of returning one day.”
“You can find a job somewhere else.”
Spoken like a career bureaucrat. Karen Kofer was a senior attorney with the Department of Justice in Washington, the only law job she’d ever had, and for almost thirty years now. Her position, like that of every person around her, was thoroughly protected. Regardless of depressions, wars, government shutdowns, national catastrophes, political upheavals, or any other possible calamity, Karen Kofer’s paycheck was inviolable. And with that came the casual arrogance of so many entrenched bureaucrats.
We are so valuable because we are so necessary.
Samantha said, “No, Mom, there are no jobs right now. In case you haven’t heard, we are in a financial crisis with a depression right around the corner. Law firms are tossing out associates in droves, then locking the doors.”
“I doubt if things are that bad.”
“Oh really. Scully & Pershing has deferred all new hires, which means that a dozen or so of the brightest from the Harvard Law School have just been informed that the jobs they were promised next September won’t be there. Same for Yale, Stanford, Columbia.”
“But you are so talented, Samantha.”
Never argue with a bureaucrat. Samantha took a deep breath and was about to sign off when an urgent call “from the White House” came through and Karen had to go. She promised to call right back, as soon as she saved the Republic. Fine, Mom, Samantha said. She received as much of her mother’s attention as she could possibly want. She was an only child, which was a good thing in retrospect, in light of the wreckage strewn high and low by her parents’ divorce.”

RATING:.

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
6-18-2022 to 7-1-2022 ( )

Legal

Learned several things about coal industry. ( )

Very entertaining journey with a culture clash of rural and urban psychology and culture. The story guides into hopes for events and opportunities then surprises with new alternative directions with the plot and events. Overall great read and very entertaining.

A great read set in the era of the finaincial crash in America. A young New York lawyer finds herself volunteering in the legal aid service in Appalacia where poverty is pervasive and the big coal companies are ruining the environment, people's health and the communities. And finding it cheaper to fight the lawsuits than to reclaim the land after they have strip-mined the coal from it. If even a third of the threads about the coal industry are true it is a global and national shame. ( )