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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. 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. 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 reportage, NYT journalist Keith O'Brien uncovers how Lois Gibbs and Luella Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood.