Paradise Falls, Keith O'Brien

The staggering story of an unlikely band of mothers in the 1970s who discovered Hooker Chemical''s deadly secret of Love Canal—exposing one of America’s most devastating toxic waste disasters and sparking the modern environmental movement as we know it today. “PropulsiveA mighty work of historical journalismA glorious quotidian thriller about people forced to find and use their inner strength.” —The Boston Globe Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. But in the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent.

It was the sickly sweet smell of chemicals. In this propulsive work of narrative storytelling, NYT journalist Keith O’Brien uncovers how Gibbs and Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood. The school and playground had been built atop an old can.