Gray Mountain

Gray Mountain is a legal thriller by John Grisham, published in 2014 and set in Appalachia in the aftermath of the recession that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Samantha Kofer works at a large New York law firm, and when the recession reaches it she is furloughed for a year rather than dismissed, on the suggestion that she spend the time doing charitable work. She has no better offer, so she moves to the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and finds a place at a legal aid office in the town of Brady, working for a woman named Mattie who takes cases the local establishment wishes she would leave alone. Samantha does not fit in at first and gradually comes to understand the town. She also meets Donovan Gray, an attorney who has spent years fighting the strip-mining companies whose employees work themselves sick while the businesses cut corners on safety.

Grisham's interest is in the distance between corporate law and legal aid, and in what happens to a lawyer who has to learn a different kind of practice in a hurry.