Don't climb this mountain

With the financial crisis of 2008, Samantha Kofer gets downsized. However, she is given the chance to return to her Wall Street Firm after working for a non profit.

Her company had a list of companies to choose from and Samantha decides to work for the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic, in Brady, Va.

The type of cases that go through her office is made up of miners who have lost their jobs due to black lung disease and their company refusing their compensation demands. She also works on creating wills and with a woman who was dismissed from her job illegally.

The people in Appalachia are definitely a group that would create sympathy but Samantha seems to be just fulfilling the requirement before she can return to New York and a high income salary. I didn't feel that she was emotionally involved with her clients.

She does meet another attorney who has taken the minor's plight to heart but she doesn't commit to help in the long run. She returns to New York to speak about her old job and speaks to her father in trying to decide her future but I didn't feel an empathy for her or that she had the guts to help those desperately in need.

There were many greedy characters in the book, from debt collectors, to coal mine companies or to FBI agents under the influence of the coal mine companies themselves.

The best part of the novel was the description of what strip mining does to the community, to the natural landscape and to the will to live of some of the depressed former miners.

I'm a fan of Grisham's writing but I expected more from this story.