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Summary
Summary
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
In Amity and Prosperity , the prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom's impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman's transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.
Stacey Haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors' mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company. Soon trucks begin rumbling past her small farm, a fenced-off drill site rises on an adjacent hilltop, and domestic animals and pets start to die. When mysterious sicknesses begin to afflict her children, she appeals to the company for help. Its representatives insist that nothing is wrong.
Alarmed by her children's illnesses, Haney joins with neighbors and a committed husband-and-wife legal team to investigate what's really in the water and air. Against local opposition, Haney and her allies doggedly pursue their case in court and begin to expose the damage that's being done to the land her family has lived on for centuries. Soon a community that has long been suspicious of outsiders faces wrenching new questions about who is responsible for their fate, and for redressing it: The faceless corporations that are poisoning the land? The environmentalists who fail to see their economic distress? A federal government that is mandated to protect but fails on the job? Drawing on seven years of immersive reporting, Griswold reveals what happens when an imperiled town faces a crisis of values, and a family wagers everything on an improbable quest for justice.
Reviews (1)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The names Amity and Prosperity conjure up images of tranquility and abundance, and, indeed, historically, the good life was found within these southwestern Pennsylvania towns. Where once coal was king, now hydraulic fracking rules the day, with mining companies competing for rights to drill into the Marcellus Shale's abundant natural-gas reserves. Along with other landowners, single-mother Stacey Haney wrestled with her conscience before signing a lease with Range Resources to drill on her land. She was working multiple jobs to raise two teens and running a farm on her own, so the promised windfall would have been welcome. But when her son manifests a series of inexplicable ailments and farm animals unexpectedly die, Haney painstakingly traces the source of the illnesses back to the water and air pollution generated by the fracking sites. Stonewalled by the mining company, shunned by her community, Haney only finds hope and help with a husband-and-wife legal team willing to take on this powerful adversary. Griswold's (The Tenth Parallel, 2010) empathetic yet analytical account of Haney's indefatigable role as advocate for justice is a thorough and thoroughly blood-pressure-raising account of the greed and fraud embedded in the environmentally ruinous natural-gas industry. As honest and unvarnished an account of the human cost of corporate corruption as one will find.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
Table of Contents
Maps | p. viii |
A Note | p. 3 |
Prologue | p. 7 |
Part I Hoopies | |
1 Fair 2010 | p. 11 |
2 When The Boom Began | p. 18 |
3 The Mess Next Door | p. 29 |
4 Arsenip | p. 37 |
5 Airborne | p. 46 |
6 Hoopies | p. 55 |
7 "One Head & One Heart, & Live in True Friendship & Amity as One People" | p. 62 |
8 Doubters | p. 68 |
9 Hang 'Em High | p. 78 |
10 Blood and Urine | p. 85 |
11 Airport | p. 97 |
Part II Burden of Proof | |
12 "Mr. and Mrs. Atticus Pinch" | p. 105 |
13 Mutual Distrust | p. 123 |
14 Buzz | p. 131 |
15 Missing Pages | p. 136 |
16 Rainbow Water | p. 142 |
17 "Dear Mr. President" | p. 148 |
18 Insurgents | p. 155 |
19 Burden of Proof | p. 159 |
20 Policing the State | p. 165 |
21 What Money Does | p. 174 |
22 Ruin Is The Destination Toward Which All Men Rush | p. 193 |
23 Remote People | p. 200 |
24 Ignorant Motherfuckers | p. 208 |
25 A Special Agent | p. 219 |
26 Full Metal Jacket | p. 225 |
Part III The Right to Clean Air and Pure Water | |
27 The Right to Clean Air and Pure Water | p. 235 |
28 Dreams | p. 243 |
29 Closing Down The Ponds | p. 248 |
30 Chasing Ghosts | p. 259 |
31 "The Junkyard Plaintiff" | p. 266 |
32 Diva | p. 270 |
33 Fair 2016 | p. 278 |
Epilogue: White Hats | p. 289 |
Postscript | p. 301 |
A Note On Sources | p. 307 |
Notes | p. 309 |
Acknowledgments | p. 317 |