Details
Synopsis
Children in Woburn, Massachusetts began getting leukemia in unusually high numbers in the mid-1960s. At about the same time, the water from two local wells began to taste of chemicals. Despite the complaints of local residents, the wells were not permanently closed until 1979. The site was put on the federal Superfund list, but the leukemia cases continued to mount. Five families from the area hired a law firm in 1980, and in 1982 their attorney filed a complaint. This is the story of that lawsuit, in which the defendants were W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods, who owned the facilities which the plaintiffs claimed caused the solvent trichloroethylene to contaminate the wells. This is a story of how the law is administered, and how, somewhere in that process, justice gets lost.
| Size | | Length: | 502 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 14.4 oz |
Industry Reviews
"You may be able to change the channel or turn off the television set and get the Simpson case out of your mind, but once you start 'A Civil Action' you probably will not be able to put it from you until it's finished, and it will stay with you for a long time even then. As it should."
T. H. Watkins (09/03/1995)
"Luminous...a beautifully assured and full-bodied story...Guterson has fashioned something haunting and true."
book jacket - Pico Iyer
"With this beautiful first novel, David Guterson establishes himself as one of the most mature, important and skillful young novelists today."
book jacket - Charles Johnson
"'Snow Falling on Cedars' announces the emergence of a skillful writer."
Times Literary Supplement - Stephen Henighan (05/26/1995)
"Whether in truth or fiction, I have never read a more compelling chronicle of litigation."
Advertisement - John Grisham
"...[A]side from the requisite twists of the mystery genre, there are no surprises in this novel. It demands little from the reader. Instead, it 'gives' us very much: maritime lore, the forensic lab, and a previously underplayed historical event....The big issues--racism, for example--are dealt with in the earnest but archly simplistic tones of Hollywood....Dilemmas of the soul are wrapped up in a quick flourish of good solid pioneer pragmatism."
London Review of Books - Tom Vanderbilt (10/03/1996)
"Jonathan Harr has written a simply terrific book about the practice of law in America. By following a single lawsuit on its tortuous path through Boston's Federal District Court, he has captured more of the sham and nobility and greed of this troubled profession than anything I have read in years. By turns wildly funny and unspeakably sad, A Civil Action is a brilliantly realized work of reportage."
Lukas
"The legal thriller of the decade."
Dirda
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