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 photographโa teenage girl lying in the dirt, her body broken by a multi-story fall, and over her mouth a mask of fabric bearing the label of one of Americaโs largest retailers, Presto Omnishops Corporation.
Eight thousand miles away at Prestoโs headquarters in Virginia, Cameron Alexander, the companyโs long-time general counsel, watches the media coverage in horror, wondering if the damage can be contained. When the photo goes viral, fanning the flames of a decades-old controversy about sweatshops, labor rights, and the ethics of globalization, he launches an investigation into the disaster that will reach further than he could ever imagineโand threaten everything he has left in the world.
A year later in Washington DC, Joshua Griswold, a disgraced former journalist from the Washington Post, receives an anonymous summons from a corporate whistleblower who offers him confidential information about Presto and the fi re. For Griswold, the challenge of exposing Prestoโs culpability 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 winโboth to salvage his reputation and to provoke a revolution in Prestoโs boardroom that could transform the fashion industry across the globe.
Praise for Harvest of Thorns:
โThis exposรฉ of the underbelly of the international fashion industry is disturbing, moving, and thoroughly engrossing.โ โPhillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of Violent Crimes
โA must-read book which uncovers what lies behind what we wear every single day. I promise that you will never be able to look at your clothes the same way again.โ โ Livia Firth, OXFAM Global Ambassador, UN Leader of Change, and Founder of Eco Age LTD
โThis is a poignant and engrossing description of the manner in which men and women from the poorest countries on the globe are pressed into working for slave wages to manufacture soft goods to be sold in the most affluent counties in North America and Europe. Corban Addison will hold you spellbound with his elegant prose from his first word to his last.โ โ Wilbur Smith, worldwide bestselling author
Corban Addison is the international bestselling author of A Walk Across the Sun, The Garden of Burning Sand, and The Tears of Dark Water,which won the 2016 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Award. His novels have been published in over 25 countries. An attorney, activist, and world traveler, he is a supporter of humanitarian and social justice causes around the world. He lives with his wife and children in Virginia. Learn more at his website corbanaddison.com Facebook: CorbanAddison Twitter: @CorbanAddison