THE GREAT DIVIDE BY DAVIS BUNN

THE GREAT DIVIDE is the first of Davis Bunn's novels that I ever read, and I have read it several times with great enjoyment.  It is a really good courtroom drama and very exciting.  The characters are well portrayed and the issues raised give one much food for thought.  We feel for Marcus Glenwood, once a lawyer in a huge firm with a wife and two children, who has now returned to his grandparents' Victorian manor on the "wrong side" of town after a devastating family tragedy.  He is restoring the house and working from there, and it is through Deacon Wilbur, an African-American pastor who is working for him that he hears of the plight of Gloria Hall who has disappeared in China. He also comes to know her parents and her best friend Kirsten and he is lovingly drawn in to the congregation of the church which he has been instrumental in saving.  He takes on New Horizons, who were after the church and cemetery land, and whose factories are selling sports clothes made in the sweatshops of China - Factory 101 being one of the most infamous.
Marcus' life is in danger from those who have no desire for their illegal and inhuman business practices to be brought out into the open.  The opposing lawyers hate him because he used to work for their firm and they take great delight in trying to destroy him. They attack his personal life. They use the fact that his wife divorced him after  their children were killed in an accident when he was driving, and the fact that, although he hadn't been drinking at the time, he definitely used to have a drinking problem.  Although the accident wasn't his fault, he blames himself.
We see how Marcus relates to the Halls, having recently lost his own precious children.  We see the contrast between his sophisticated, moneyed, wife, who can't  bring herself to forgive him when he goes to say how sorry he is, and the down to earth, compassionate and loving people that have become his friends.  He is gradually restored as he puts his life on the line to help these grieving people, who others were too scared to help because of the power and brutality of the opposition.
We are held in suspense throughout, and we meet many colourful characters as the story unfolds.  I can highly recommend this book.