Stacey Haney, nurse and single mother of two, had just settled onto a farm near the town of Amity, Pennsylvania. Horses, goats, dogs, and rabbits roamed about the rolling green grass along the property. Stacy’s daughter Ashley was in her twenties, and her son Harley was entering seventh grade. This serene picture began to unravel when the fracking industry came to town in the early 2000’s. Trucks were everywhere, and houses and roads were crumbling. Sediment turned black, the water had gone grey, and dust and grime filled residents’ throats and lungs. What began as an optimistic boom of industry in the town of Amity, quickly became a long winding road of unintended consequences and mysterious illnesses.

In her new book, Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, journalist Eliza Griswold portrays the destroyed lives of people confronting our nation’s hugely profitable energy extraction industry. She approaches fracking, which is a complex web of political, economic, environmental, and health issues, through a deeply human and compassionate narrative. Readers who know little about fracking or the law will emerge with newfound appreciation of how tough it is to fight the energy sector’s corporate interests that are protected by government regulation. Through storytelling, Griswold exposes the too-often hidden relationship between dangerous environmental exposures and human health.

Amity and Prosperity are the names of two towns in Washington County, Pennsylvania on the border of Appalachia. Amity and Prosperity both have long histories in the extractive energy industry; coal, iron, and oil industries have all left behind environmental and economic damage. But Griswold shows how fracking proved to be the most fatal.

A company called Range Resources came to Amity offering locals payment in exchange for permission to frack for natural gas. Natural gas was a bountiful, “clean” energy alternative that promised economic security for a poor coal mining town in Appalachia, and energy independence for America that would help end international oil wars. Everything sounded good. Residents, like Stacey, began signing leases without fully understanding the terms, knowledge of fracking, or consideration of consequences.

Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a method of extracting natural gas from rock underground. At extremely high pressure, a partially unknown combination of chemicals, sand, and water is injected into the ground in order to create cracks that allow gas to come up. Imagine a plant that shoots out a root system to bring in water so it can live, but with chemicals that help retrieve gas so people can have energy. The process creates massive amounts of wastewater that is then stored in huge constructed pools.

In 2004 Range Resources fracked its first well in Washington county. Stacey signed a lease. By 2010 the fracking boom reached its peak. Range Resources became a billion-dollar company and Pennsylvania was producing one-fifth of America’s natural gas supply.

Fracking, however, quickly proved too good to be true. Griswold shares the gripping stories of hardship that followed. Stacey’s home crumbled, her health deteriorated, and the whole town filled with chemical waste and dying animals. Stacey’s daughter Ashley’s puppy had died: “Cummins’s insides had frozen up…as if he’d drunk antifreeze”. Stacey’s son, Harley, had become “a listless stick figure”. Harley got tested for numerous diseases, but there was no diagnosis. No one knew that fracking was the cause. The doctors’ only advice was to boil the water and go gluten free.

At the center of Griswold’s story is Stacey, who becomes an “unlikely activist”. She conducted her own water and air tests that found carcinogens, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), Acrotein (used in chemical weapons), hydrogen sulfide, and arsenic. Stacey pieced together connections, but at the time these chemicals and their health effects were unknown. One neighbor incorrectly called Arsenic “Arsenip”. The most horrifying part? All of Range Resources chemical tests were negative. After uncovering forged test results and poison leaks, she worked with attorneys to take on major agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency in a fight for validation of her reality. Crucial environmental health information had been withheld from the community, and the result was a dying town.

This is the story a mother who was forced to become a detective, activist, and educator to fight for the health of her family and community. This book will probably make you cry and rage, a lot. It’s a harrowing story that feels more like a dystopia than reality. Griswold’s masterful storytelling, showing rather than telling, makes her feel more like a poet than a journalist. Her words are compelling in making readers care for the people who stories she tells, and in motivating activism against the industry.

Environmental exposures from fracking are at the core of the emerging health issues in Amity. As the fracking industry continues to expand – and is still protected by government policy from disclosing its toxic ingredients – Amity and Prosperity is a clarion call to communities who still have a chance to say no. As Stacey’s family and home are destroyed by fracking, Griswold recounts how Stacey felt like a refugee in a nightly search for medical care and a place to sleep. Amity and Prosperity exemplifiesenvironmental health literacy as Griswold deftly shows the lasting impact of environment on health, and the narrative power of creating human connection in conveying a message full of science and law to the public.

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