A lawyer with a conscience? A Homeless man with a message? A law firm held to ransom? So much drama and so effectively told. We are taken quite brutally into the uncomfortable, compelling, and ugly world of homelessness which for manifold reasons exist in ever-increasing numbers in cities all around the world. Michael Brock is a man of character; a man who discovers he cannot live with who he thought he was, following a frightening hold up in his office. He witnesses the fear, disbelief and horror of his peers at Drake and Sweeney during this stressful situation but the apparent ease with which they resumed normality(post trauma)eludes him.
He gives up a lot in his quest to make peace with his soul, and it wasn't easy to convince Mordecai (Director of the 14th Street Legal Clinic and advocate of the homeless)that he was in it for the long haul. Michael's marriage is in trouble. Claire is puzzled with the change occuring in her husband, unsure if she likes the new Michael any him better than the one she had married. As a reader, I really wanted things to work out for them; feeling great empathy for this man who'd become energized with fresh passion and vision. But as any avid reader will tell you, our wishes don't always come true. Who would settle for predictability anyway? Not me!

This was a reread for me and I have to be honest, I’d forgotten how damn good some of these older Grisham books are!

Michael had his life mapped out, young, married, on the face track to making partner at his law firm, where he was already making good money. Yet things has started to go wrong, first he and his wife had begun leaving separate lives, although they still lived in the same apartment.

He had been so busy, he even ignored the street panhandlers, walking by them daily without even seeing them. That is, he did not see them until one homeless man followed him into an elevator t his office.

When the homeless man takes Michael and a small group of his colleagues hostage at gun point, Michael not only sees the man, but suddenly wants to learn more; and learn he does.

In the end, Michael absconds with a private file from his company and ends himself on the street as a street lawyer and a thief. What is it that Michael stole and why did he do it?