{"id":6251,"date":"2026-05-06T23:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6251"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:40:12","slug":"review-against-all-odds-by-richard-a-danzig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6251","title":{"rendered":"Review: Against All Odds by Richard A. Danzig"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Synopsis:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chance Cormac faces a personal and professional crisis as he loses faith in the law and himself. He abandons his practice and life in Brooklyn to volunteer to represent illegally detained immigrants throughout the country. From the federal courts to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador, against all odds, Chance struggles to rescue a client who is imprisoned without any hope of escape. While Chance pursues justice, his former paralegal and first love Sally McConnell, is forced to confront her husband\u2019s cancer and the cyberbullying of her daughter Melody by a student in her high school. Chance must regain his faith in order to save those who need him most and himself.<\/p>\n

Favorite Lines:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA cut can\u2019t heal if you keep taking the bandage off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not magic, Chance, it\u2019s diplomacy\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe solitude and calmness have permitted me to look in, not out.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.<\/p>\n

This book feels like it\u2019s juggling a lot. Legal drama, spiritual awakening, political commentary, personal redemption arc\u2026 and somehow it works.<\/p>\n

At the center is Chance Cormac, who is not exactly subtle as a protagonist. He\u2019s a lawyer, a bit of a crusader, a bit of a mess, and very clearly someone the story wants you to see as both flawed and morally grounded. You meet him already carrying a lot\u2014loss, burnout, disillusionment with the legal system\u2014and the book just keeps stacking things on top of that.<\/p>\n

The plot moves in a way that feels almost episodic at times. One minute you\u2019re in a courtroom dealing with immigration law and media chaos, the next you\u2019re inside a prison that reads like something out of a dystopian novel, and then suddenly you\u2019re on a pilgrimage walking through monasteries and reflecting on faith.<\/p>\n

That shift shouldn\u2019t work as well as it does, but there\u2019s a through-line: Chance trying to figure out what any of it means. Not just justice in a legal sense, but justice in a human sense. And more than that, whether any of it actually matters in the long run.<\/p>\n

The prison sections are where the book hits hardest. They\u2019re not subtle, but they\u2019re effective. The conditions are brutal, and the message is clear: systems fail people, and sometimes they do it in ways that feel almost impossible to fix. There\u2019s a rawness there that cuts through the more philosophical parts of the story.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the book doesn\u2019t stay in that darkness for too long without pulling back into something more reflective. The spiritual elements aren\u2019t just background noise\u2014they\u2019re baked into the story. Near-death experiences, questions of faith, purpose, second chances\u2026 it all leans pretty heavily into the idea that suffering is supposed to mean<\/em> something.<\/p>\n

Where the book really lands, though, is in its quieter moments. Conversations with Melody, the way grief shows up in small, ordinary interactions, the exhaustion that comes from trying to keep doing the \u201cright thing\u201d when it doesn\u2019t seem to change anything.<\/p>\n

By the end, it leans hard into redemption. Not in a clean, tied-up way, but in a \u201ckeep going anyway\u201d kind of way. There\u2019s loss, there\u2019s some resolution, and there\u2019s this underlying suggestion that maybe the point isn\u2019t winning\u2014it\u2019s continuing to show up.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall, this is a layered, sometimes messy mix of legal drama, social commentary, and spiritual reflection centered on a burned-out lawyer trying to do the right thing in a system that often doesn\u2019t reward it. Readers who enjoy character-driven legal fictions may enjoy this book. Happy reading!<\/p>\n

Check out\u00a0Against All Odds<\/em> here!<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis: Chance Cormac faces a personal and professional crisis as he loses faith in the law and himself. He abandons his practice and life in Brooklyn to volunteer to represent illegally detained immigrants throughout the country. From the federal courts to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador, against all odds, Chance struggles to rescue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}