A Harvest of Thorns

A beloved American corporation with an explosive secret. A disgraced former journalist looking for redemption. A corporate executive with nothing left to lose. 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-story 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, labor 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. There, to Griswold's astonishment, he meets Cameron Alexander, Presto's long-time general counsel. Alexander,...