John Grisham's novel "Gray Mountain"

John Grisham's novel "Gray Mountain" is worth the read. The book is a legal thriller chronicling the conflict between big coal companies in Appalachia and the workers in the coal industry. In a book that comes across as truly passionate on its subject, the author weaves a story of crusading lawyers fighting big business and a legal system that is easily manipulated by those with money. Rather than being an even playing field dedicated to finding justice, the courts are arenas where big business beats workers literally to death with appeals and lies, augmented by corporate goons threatening violence at every turn.

While the resolution of the novel is firmly supportive of working within the system, the actual facts vividly described are a penetrating condemnation of capitalist justice that implicitly asks the question of whether the state apparatus is so one-sided in favor of big money as to be irretrievably corrupt and needing to be dumped through a fundamental change in the power relations between workers and employers.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a good holiday (or otherwise) read. Its fun, intelligent, moving, and accurate. John Grisham at his best.