Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: dandelion wine, developing ovarian cancer, Lake Effect, Great Lakes, Lake Michigan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1992, Nichols' beloved elder sister was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer. On her deathbed, she makes Nichols, already a journalist, promise to write about her illness and what the two of them suspected might be the cause of it: massive pollution in their hometown of Waukegen, Ill., on the shore of Lake Michigan. In the midst of working on the book, Nichols received her own diagnosis-she also has a rare form of cancer which requires aggressive treatment. "My story was my sister's once over," she writes. Nichols constructs a fast-moving, urgent narrative that catalogues the evidence of the many different forms of pollution and the likelihood that they contributed to the cancers, documenting the choices and treatment she must face as a cancer patient. There is also, inevitably, a prosecutorial tone and a barely suppressed sense of outrage that such reckless pollution could be allowed to happen. Even if, as she explains, the facts that what she uncovers wouldn't stand up in court, the book still bears witness to both her own and her sister's trials.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Nancy Nichols made a deathbed promise to her sister that she would investigate the toxic history of their hometown, Waukegan, Ill., on the shore of Lake Michigan. A small town once known as the "Coho Capital of the World," Waukegan was a bucolic place for the girls to grow up, with happy summer days spent splashing in the lake. That was before the Environmental Protection Agency designated the town as the location of three separate Superfund sites. Beginning in the 1950s, the Outboard Marine Corporation, maker of Evinrude and Johnson boat motors, poured tons of hydraulic fluid containing PCBs into the lake. Other corporations, including the notorious Johns-Manville, which went bankrupt in the 1980s under the weight of liability claims, dumped asbestos and solvents onto fields and beaches where the children of Waukegan played. When Nichols was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer -- eight years after her sister died of ovarian cancer -- the journalist began digging in earnest into the town's toxic legacy and the science of environmental hazards. Part memoir, part investigation, Lake Effect chronicles Nichols's attempts to link the polluted water and soil of Waukegan to her sister's death and her own disease, a difficult task even for a writer better equipped to sift through the arcana of epidemiological research. She makes links that aren't scientifically justified: for instance, between how pollutants known as endocrine disrupters affect wildlife and her own difficulty in having a second child at the age of 40. Despite acknowledging the impossibility of pinning "a particular person's cancer [on] a particular chemical," she then proceeds to spend much of the book trying to do precisely that. Lake Effect is an engaging and generally well-told tale, though it does not succeed in forging a clear link between the author's disease and pollution. Even so, it is hard to believe that Nichols is not at least partly right, that the staggering amount of toxic goo dumped in Waukegan over the span of less than 50 years has surely had an impact on the health of its citizens.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (August 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597260843
• ISBN-13: 978-1597260848
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #565,685 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional book that I could not put down , September 22, 2008

By	Patricia Wen (Brookline, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I rarely read a book in one sitting, but this one I could not put down. Nancy Nichols has put together a beautifully written and robustly researched book about her sister's - and her own - struggle with cancer, and her investigation into the links between these cancers and the contaminated lake of their childhood. What I love about the book is that it is as emotionally powerful as it is intellectually honest. There seems voluminous evidence to suggest a link between her old neighborhood and her family's cancers, but she does not let her writings resort to impulsive finger-pointing. She is journalistically rigorous, while being human, real and, at times, quite funny. A truly exceptional book - something for the heart and mind.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, September 24, 2008

By	Melissa Fristrom (Watertown, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nancy writes an amazing environmental memoir. It combines the rigorous research of a journalist with the touching honesty of a woman. This makes a great read for all: the scientist, the humanist, and the regular bloke like me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lake Effect:Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy, August 11, 2009

By	Book Crazy Girl (Iowa) - See all my reviews

Well written, and a must read for anyone who grew up in Waukegan, IL (as my family did) and surrounding Lake Michigan shore line towns to the north and south. The information in the book could have serious health-related repracussions for the population, past and present,from that specific area.