There are few things in life that could be worse than loosing you child to such a horrible disease as leukemia. One can only imagine having such a tragedy repeat itself throughout you community time after time. To compound such tragedies, imagine being poisoned yourself and having to fight some of the largest local corporations to prove the truth and get it stopped. This is the community setting for Jonathan Harr's true-to-life legal thriller A Civil Action. The book was an award winner for "Best Seller" in 1995 and was named the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award.

The setting of the book is in the New England state of Woburn, Massachusetts. This is a sleepy little community that is overcast by local factories. The factories have been contaminating the ground and water supplies for several years by dumping a chemical known as TCE. Though nobody would openly admit to...