An account of the years the author and his family lived on the edge of the Great Basin Desert in Grantsville, Utah, and how an idyllic life was interrupted by tales of sickness and death and a hidden history of ecocide
This is a paperbound reprint of a 1999 book, about which Book News wrote: This regional and personal biography begins when the author and his family moved to Grantsville, Utah for purposes of small-town neighborliness and safety. Tales began to circulate about local cases of cancer, birth defects, and respiratory problems, spurring a seven-year search that uncovered a history of ecocide and caused Ward to organize opposition to hazardous waste disposal, chemical weapons incineration, industrial pollution, and nuclear waste storage. Ward manages Utah's public library development program and is an activist in several environmental organizations. Neither index nor notes accompany this less academic addition to Verso's more scholarly Haymarket Series. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
A quest to understand the secret history of ecocide in Utah.
In the late 1970s Chip Ward and his wife left the Sleeping Rainbow Ranch in Capitol Reef National Park to raise their children in the classic small-town American setting of Grantsville, Utah. There, on the edge of the Great Basin Desert, disturbing tales of local sickness and death interrupted an idyllic life. A seven-year quest to understand a hidden history of ecocide followed. Canaries on the Rim is Ward's firsthand account of that quest and how lessons learned in the wilderness were later applied to building opposition to toxic waste disposal, chemical weapons incineration, industrial pollution, and nuclear waste storage. The secret holocaust that is unfolding along the toxic shadow of America's Great Basin Desert is grim, but Ward's colorful and often-humorous story is not. Canaries on the Rim is a warning and a call to arms, but it is also a compelling drama and a lively primer on environmental activism. If civil action took place in Edward Abbey's West, this is the book that would result.
