Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and told with the air of suspense that few writers can handle, Wastelands is a Story I wish I had written.
With journalistic rigor and a novelist\'s instinct for story, Corban Addison\'s Wastelands captures the inspiring struggle to bring a modern-day monopoly to its knees, to force a once-invincible corporation to change, and to preserve the rights--and restore the heritage--of a long-suffering community..
Fighting alongside them in the courtroom is Mona Lisa Wallace, who broke the gender barrier in her small southern town and built a storied legal career out of vanquishing corporate giants, and Mike Kaeske, whose Trial skills are second to none.
And there is Tom Butler, an environmental savant and hog industry insider whose whistleblowing testimony electrifies the jury.
Steve Wing, a groundbreaking epidemiologist whose work on the health effects of hog waste exposure translates the neighbors\' stories into the argot of science.
There is Woodell McGowan, a quiet man whose quest to redeem his family\'s ancestral land encourages him to become a better neighbor, and Dr.
There is Don Webb, a larger-than-life hog farmer turned grassroots crusader, and Rick Dove, a riverkeeper and erstwhile military judge who has pioneered the use of aerial photography to document the scale of the pollution.
There is Elsie Herring, the most outspoken of the neighbors, who has endured racial slurs and the threat of a restraining order to tell the Story of the waste raining down on her rooftop from the hog operation next door.
As vivid and fast-paced as a thriller, Wastelands takes us into the heart of a legal battle over the future of America\'s farmland and into the lives of the people who found the courage to fight.
After years of frustration and futility, an impassioned cadre of local residents, led by a team of intrepid and dedicated lawyers, filed a lawsuit against one of the world\'s most powerful companies--and, miraculously, they won. --From the Foreword by John Grisham The once idyllic coastal plain of North Carolina is home to a close-knit, rural community that for more than a generation has battled the polluting practices of large-scale farming taking place in its own backyard.
Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and told with the air of suspense that few writers can handle, Wastelands is a Story I wish I had written
