It’s a quandary – how to get people more engaged with oft-overlooked and marginalized environmental matters, pertaining to: the early days of the hazardous waste industry and the workers who toiled anonymously in an industry designed to help America move on from the mistakes of its industrial past and into our industrial future.
To that end, author Peter J Gorton has come up with a solution that he believes will get more people enthusiastic about reading technical subject matter, because he’s essentially baked the storyline into a tantalizing novel format. This format is unusual, in that it sprinkles in a number of non-related incidents (riveting in their own right) that occurred at around the same time of the passage of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments in 1984.
“The novel ‘Eggshells of Eagles’ is about the early days of the Hazardous Waste Industry (in respect to its workers and the environment),” says Gorton. “The title refers to the advent of early environmental regulations wrapped around the pesticide DDT and how it was thinning the eggshells of eagles causing them to crack and their young not surviving. The novel covers lots of stories about Buffalo, ecology, and the environment, including the 22-Caliber Killer (1980s), and a murder in Arkwright (a town in Chautauqua County). It’s my attempt to take a technical subject and introduce it in a novel format style. It covers stories that include the murder, the serial killer, and a famous spy, intermingled in stories about notorious superfund sites across the country.”
The events portrayed in this book are real, as told through the experiences of one of the early workers, Nick. The story also examines how the public is introduced to the notorious toxic substances from DDT to PFAS and the consumer products that birthed them. – Eggshells of Eagles
Eggshells of Eagles provides the context, and unravels the mysteries behind an era that was unlike any other. As companies polluted the environment with reckless abandon, especially in cities like Buffalo that were growing at breakneck speed, with limited safeguards and precautions, it’s time to take a closer look at the backstory, while examining a few of the ill-famed characters that reared their ugly heads in later years. No, this may not be a traditional storytelling technique, but it is certainly a riveting one.
Gorton, whose years of technical experience in environmental consultation, assessment, investigation, and remediation – is perfectly suited to deliver something that is not your everyday novel. And that, is a refreshing change.
Publisher: Rock / Paper / Safety Scissors in Kenmore, NY (August 30, 2023)
The paperback novel can be found on Amazon and Barnes & Noble (barnesandnoble.com).