A young lawyer's story of social justice and finding her place in the world

Yolanda Vance is a young African American recently graduated lawyer. Yolanda has had to single-mindedly strive and achieve to survive in a world that has left her essentially orphaned. In her first job as an attorney at a prestigious corporate New York law firm, she is asked to shred documents in the middle of a raid by the FBI. The firm is guilty of securities fraud and Yolanda does the right thing and becomes a whistleblower. She is offered a position with the FBI, which she thinks will be a desk job. To her surprise, Yolanda is sent undercover to infiltrate an eco- and social justice activist group in California, who are taking on a large energy corporation with a defense contract. The activist group is seen as a threat by the FBI, but Yolanda quickly realizes that all is not that it seems and begins to question who the real criminals are. Yolanda starts as a narrow, focused and, in some ways, naive character who grows and empowers herself throughout the story. A Spy in the Struggle explores a lot of interesting and relevant issues such as how racial, community, environmental and social justice all intersect. Like Yolanda, we, as readers, are led to contemplate and question what we see in our world and investigate what is occurring beneath the surface.