Book Report #92 - The Appeal

The Appeal by John Grisham

Krane Chemical is a larger-than-life company that has no need to consider the fates of the country bumpkin people its toxic water touches. The town of Bowmore, Missisppi becomes known as Cancer Country when people become sick and even start to die from the poisoned water. The company is sued first by Jeannette Baker whose husband and little son died from drinking the water. She wins $41 million from Krane Chemical and the town is hopeful that it will be cleaned up--until the appeal. Now anything can happen.

The Appeal is written with a distaste for big business and its tort lawyers. Would they really go so far as to buy a seat on the State Supreme Court?

I've read most everything Grisham has written and it is in The Appeal and his prior work, The Innocent Man, where I really started to notice his disgust with certain aspects of the legal system. I can't tell if he was always this way and I was too young to notice before or if he's becoming older and more jaded. Maybe the system is becoming worse? I'd really like to discuss it with him.

General consensus: Interesting and enticing.