Bistro Bookers
Next meeting: November 4, 2025
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Book title: Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe
Author: Keith O’Brien
Discussed by: Luella Kenny (Love Canal environmental activist)
Book summary from the publisher:
Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. But in the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent. It was the sickly sweet smell of chemicals.
In this propulsive work of narrative storytelling, NYT journalist Keith O’Brien uncovers how Gibbs and Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood. The school and playground had been built atop an old canal—Love Canal, it was called—that Hooker Chemical, the city’s largest employer, had quietly filled with twenty thousand tons of toxic waste in the 1940s and 1950s. This waste was now leaching to the surface, causing a public health crisis the likes of which America had never seen before and sparking new and specific fears. Luella Kenny believed the chemicals were making her son sick.
O’Brien braids together previously unknown stories of Hooker Chemical’s deeds; the local newspaperman, scientist, and congressional staffer who tried to help; the city and state officials who didn’t; and the heroic women who stood up to corporate and governmental indifference to save their families and their children. They would take their fight all the way to the top, winning support from the EPA, the White House, and even President Jimmy Carter. By the time it was over, they would capture America’s imagination.
Sweeping and electrifying, Paradise Falls brings to life a defining story from our past, laying bare the dauntless efforts of a few women who—years before Erin Brockovich took up the mantle— fought to rescue their community and their lives from the effects of corporate pollution and laid foundation for the modern environmental movement as we know it today.
Event details
Date and time: Tuesday, November 4 @ 4:00 pm
Venue: Amherst Center for Senior Services (370 John James Audubon Parkway, Amherst, NY 14228)
Suggested donation of $2 per person is greatly appreciated. Your donation helps Bistro Bookers to continue to hold these reviews and donate back to our community literacy programs. Your donation also allows us to purchase the featured book if necessary and give the reviewer a gift for their time.
You MUST reserve your seat by 3:00 pm on Friday, October 31 for this event by calling 716-636-3051 and providing your name and phone number. If you call to reserve for more than one person, you must provide each person’s name and phone number.
Coming up
Tuesday, December 9 @ 4:00 pm: All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley, reviewed by Robert Poczik
No review in January
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 @ 4:00 pm: The Phantom of Forest Lawn: Romance and Redemption in the City of the Dead by Robert Brighton, reviewed by Jennifer Kovach (Executive Administrative Assistant, Forest Lawn Cemetery Group; Research Assistant to author Robert Brighton)
See you at the next review!