A Civil Action Audio Book CDs Abridged

A Civil Action
Author: Jonathan Harr
Reader: John Shea

The true account of a lawyer's struggle for justice in a case he did not want: a cluster of childhood leukemia victims in a small town near a well polluted with industrial chemicals. Now an acclaimed film starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall. » Read More

Available Audio Book Editions:

E4R149

ABRIDGED

Audio CDs ( 3 )

Price:

$14.99

Publish Date: 08/30/2005
ISBN: 9780739321492

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.

Book Awards:

Winner of the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction

Winner of the 1996 ABBY in Fiction

Book Reviews:

"...[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)

"Whether in truth or fiction, I have never read a more compelling chronicle of litigation."

- John Grisham ()

"Luminous...a beautifully assured and full-bodied story...Guterson has fashioned something haunting and true."

- Pico Iyer ()

Related Subjects to Browse

Fiction Genres » Action & Thrillers » Conspiracy
Fiction Genres » Action & Thrillers » Legal
Science » Environmental Science » Groundwater - Pollution

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A Civil Action Audio Book

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