A gripping new thriller that unpacks the horrors of exploitation in the garment industry, blending the nailbiting courtroom drama of John Grisham with the emotional heart of Khaled Hosseini.
‘Poignant and engrossing … Corban Addison will hold you spellbound with his elegant prose from his first word to his last’ Wilbur Smith
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a garment factory burns to the ground, claiming the lives of hundreds of workers, mostly young women. Amid the rubble, a bystander captures a heart-stopping image-a teenage girl lying in the dirt, her body broken by a multi-storey fall, and over her mouth a mask of fabric bearing the label of one of America’s largest retailers, Presto Omnishops Corporation. When the photo goes viral, it fans the flames of a decades old controversy about sweatshops, labour rights, and the ethics of globalization.
A year later, in Washington, D.C., Joshua Griswold, a disgraced former journalist for the Washington Post, receives an anonymous summons from a corporate whistleblower promising information about Presto. He offers Griswold confidential information about Presto’s apparel supply chain.
For Griswold, the challenge of exposing Presto’s wilful negligence is irresistible, as is the chance, however slight, at redemption. Deploying his old journalistic skills, he builds a historic case against Presto, setting the stage for a war in the courtroom and in the media that Griswold is determined to win – both to salvage his reputation and to provoke a revolution of conscience in Presto’s boardroom that could change the course of the fashion industry across the globe.
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Summary
Book Title: A Harvest of Thorns
Book Author: Corban Addison
What do you like about this book:
"Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." - the prophet Amos
"A Harvest of Thorns" is a startling fictional expose of the garment industry from a very primal level, forcing the eye of the consumer to focus on those who will never wear the fashionable clothing they toil to manufacture; in fact, some scarcely have the privilege to exist. Forced to work in deplorable conditions, with little security against the advances of their employers, or barely enough freedoms to be considered anything but slaves, the story begins with an inferno that completely destroys a Bangladesh factory and like a mighty river, the repercussions carve their way back to a multi-billion dollar enterprise in the United States.
Bonded by anonymity are two key players; a brilliant corporate lawyer who is determined to not only follow the law, but to exact moral justice, and an award laden news journalist who has traveled the world in order to expose earth shattering stories. The end result is not only an extraordinary story, but one that will prompt every reader to read the labels in their clothing and wonder, "was it worth a harvest of thorns"?
Clearly written with a general market reader audience in mind, the occasional expletives and references to brutal assaults are well within the range of characterization and setting, though no less unsettling. Epic in length and weighted with considerable legal platitudes; what could be distracting in most cases, simply adds to the intrinsic value of this remarkable novel.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions stated above are entirely my own.
Your ratings of the level of sex, violence, language and drug/alcohol use on a scale of 1-5.
Sex:1
Violence:0
Language:1
Drug/Alcohol use:0