Environmental Nightmare

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.

Scott Drake talks with the author Nancy Nichols in this video.