The Istoriaphile’s Corner

I’m usually a lukewarm John Grisham fan.  I was a youngish paralegal when he hit it big with The Firm, but I found too many holes in the next few legal thrillers to enjoy them much.  I’m too much of a southern girl not to love A Time to Kill and I like some of his non-legal stories.   I love what he did for the Oxford American.  All in all, you could say there are writers I usually like more but that’s not true today. Today, I found out about Gray Mountain and this evening, I read the book.   I had to because this Grisham thriller touches a field close to home.   This is his book about coal. For those who don’t know, coal generates a lot of the USA’s electricity.  Right now, it supplies about thirty-nine percent, more than any other single source, and that’s way down from what it used to be.  Coal mining is a big, tough industry and it has a huge impact where I live.  People have jobs and incomes  here that they probably wouldn’t have except for coal.  On the other hand, the toll mining takes on a human body is scary.  Even with…