Exposé of the fashion industry set in USA, Bangladesh and Malaysia, plus Talking Location With Corban Addison

6th February 2017

A Harvest of Thorns by Corban Addison, a slow burning thriller set in USA, Bangladesh and Malaysia (and Jordan and Cape Verde Islands)

I first came across Corban Addison when we reviewed The Garden of Burning Sand and A Walk Across the Sun. These novels have stuck with me to this day. Essentially it was the passion and quality of his writing that dug deep. And once again – in this novel – he has taken on a huge subject. In A Harvest of Thorns he tackles injustice, the big conglomerates at the sharp end of the fashion industry versus the poor and displaced of the world. This is the kind of book that can change your thinking and the way in which you view of the world.

Presto is the largest retailer in the States for clothing, ranging from the cheaper end – Piccolo –  to more upmarket styles in the Porto Bari range. It is a beloved brand for the American people. “The story of Presto was a legend in American business“. Originally established in the 1960s with the welfare in mind of both workers and buyers of the goods, the founders went to great lengths to ensure that theirs was not an exploitative supply chain. They chose ‘warm and feel-good’ names for the brands, borrowed from the Italian, to give a sense of family, love and of the culturally exotic. But as the years have passed, the shareholders have become increasingly demanding of greater dividends, and the company is pitted against ruthless competition where cost cutting and low prices are fundamental. “quality…at an unbeatable price. That’s the holy grail of retail.” It seems the company has swung away from the ideals of the forefathers and moved towards the bottom line, focussing more on the phenomenal profit margins.

But this change comes at a cost as Presto is soon to find out….

The book opens with a fire in Bangladesh, at Millennium Fashions, a garment factory, where many hundreds of the workers have been killed. Only three fire extinguishers for a 1000 workers! This company – once used by Presto – is now  blacklisted (or on their “red” list as they classify it). So, how come there is a photo of a child, dead at the scene, with a pair of children’s trousers draped over her face, the Presto company insignia “P” only too clearly visible? The photo has instantly gone viral. There is a tsunami of negative publicity building and Cameron, the head lawyer of the company, takes on the onus of unravelling the supply chain issues. It is damage limitation whilst an investigation ensues into corruption and blame. And for him it is also about humanitarian concerns. He also has to manage the enmity between sourcing and compliance, no mean feat.

The author is incredibly adept at developing a core story and then feeding in the personal stories of his characters to enhance the narrative. Cameron has a tragic backstory that makes his determination to right the wrongs all that more understandable. The writing feels very real and it is often very sobering in its content. He is informative too, who know that “...the production of textiles was one of the most prolific sources of water pollution the world”?

I think of the author in terms of John Grisham “light”. I find Grisham’s stories at times hard to penetrate, and so Addison’s storylines feel that much more accessible. They are set in a real world where there is dreadful exploitation and injustice. He is an author who will take up a cause and bring it to a wider audience with great panache. An author with a social conscience. Having read this novel we will all surely think more carefully about the origin of our clothing? If this book is anything to go by, it behoves us to do so!

The locations in the novel feel credible too, whether dining in Old Ebbit Grill near The White House in Washington or Izumi in Dhaka, he manages to create a colourful and absorbing backdrop.

Recommended.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

Over to Addison for our #TalkingLocationWith…. feature:

© Corban Addison

I’ve always believed that to write a great story about the world, I have to live it first. I have to walk in the footsteps of my characters. I have to see the world through their eyes, to imagine how they would handle certain situations in the context of the place. With my new novel, A Harvest of Thorns, I felt strongly that the story needed to be as global as the subject matter—the underside of the international fashion industry. Fashion touches every place that humans inhabit, and its products touch all of us—quite literally—99% of our lives.

© Corban Addison

So I did something I’ve always wanted to do. I made a full circuit of the earth, from east to west, in four weeks, starting in Virginia, where I live, and making stops in Los Angeles, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Jordan, the Cape Verde Islands, Boston, and New York. The trip was an unforgettable adventure, but it was also—critically—about doing the journalistic style investigative work that undergirds my craft.

© Corban Addison

At the center of A Harvest of Thorns is a great American retailer with a secret—the way its discount clothes are really made—and five people who know or discover that secret—three garment workers making for Presto overseas, Presto’s senior vice president and general counsel, effectively the conscience of the company, and a two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist who, with the help of a public interest law firm, brings an historic lawsuit against Presto to expose the abuses endemic in its apparel supply chain.

© Corban Addison

As with all of my books, I did my research on two wavelengths simultaneously. I spent time learning about the fashion industry from people who know it intimately—workers, factory owners and managers, buying agents, inspectors, labor activists, academics, and lawyers—and I immersed myself in the places I went, visiting factories and workers in their homes and dormitories, hanging out in slums, traveling through the countryside by car, train, and plane, and taking copious notes to bring these locations to life in the story.

Bangladesh Slum © Corban Addison

© Corban Addison

© Corban Addison

In California—basically the last place that clothes are “Made in the USA”—I interviewed a lawyer who spends his days suing fast fashion brands for the wages sweatshop owners purloin from their workers, mostly immigrants. I tried very hard to land interviews with the brands, but it wasn’t until much later that I was able to breach their firewall of secrecy and get a view from the inside.

Touring © Corban Addison

In Malaysia—a country that makes athletic wear for the American and European markets—I met migrant workers who were victims of forced labor. They had been deceived by unscrupulous manpower agents into signing labor contracts with onerous fees that bound them to work for one to three years before they made a dime.

Malaysia Workers © Corban Addison

In Bangladesh—the world’s second largest garment exporting country, after China—I met some of the survivors of the Tazreen Fashions factory fire who had jumped out of the upper story windows to survive the flames, all while making a last-minute order for Walmart.

© Corban Addison

© Corban Addison

In Jordan—a rising force in the fashion industry thanks to its free trade agreement with the United States—I met with officials from the International Labor Organization’s Better Work program and with human rights activists who help workers trapped in conditions of sexual abuse and forced labor.

Amman © Corban Addison

Then in Cape Verde and Boston, I scouted locations for important scenes in the story—and had a delightful time doing it.

Cape Verde Islands © Corban Addison

Boston © Corban Addison

Finally, in New York, I visited the site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, now part of the campus at New York University. The Triangle fire was, in many troubling respects, a direct precursor to the Tazreen fire in 2012.

NEW YORK © Corban Addison

My goal as a novelist is to explore hidden dimensions of the world we live in through the lens of storytelling. I’m not interested in putting something I invented in my head on the page. I’m passionate about discovering the truth of the real world and weaving that truth into a story that keeps the pages turning and invites readers to look at themselves and the world around them in new ways. A Harvest of Thorns is exactly that kind of story, a global adventure, a journey into the heart a multinational corporation struggling to make sense of its responsibility in the world, and a high-profile quest for justice in the media and the courtroom. I hope it is as fun to read as it was to research and write.

Thank you so much to Addison for sharing his insights to research. It’s been a really interesting world tour!

You can follow Corban on Twitter, Facebook, and connect via his website

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