La nueva heroína de Grisham es una caja de sorpresas. Hace una semana Samantha Kofer trabajaba en una prestigiosa firma de abogados de Nueva York. Ahora trabaja gratis en una asesoría legal para clientes sin recursos en una pequeña ciudad de Virginia. La caída de Lehman Brothers supuso para ella la pérdida del trabajo, de la seguridad y del futuro. Su mundo no tiene nada que ver con su vida pasada de peces gordos y bonos desorbitados. En la actualidad se enfrenta a clientes reales con problemas reales en las tierras del carbόn, donde la ley es diferente y defender la verdad significa poner en peligro la vida. Su nuevo jefe se dedica a demandar a las compañías mineras por los destrozos medioambientales que están devastando la comarca, y mucha gente lo odia por ello. La vida de Samantha ha dado un giro de 180 grados.

Samantha Kofer's career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track -- until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. She's offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she'd get her old job back. Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town's legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to "help real people with real problems." For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren't so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly.