Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial

In this exceptional account, Addison (A Harvest of Thorns) reveals how a cadre of dedicated lawyers and long-suffering North Carolina families fought, and won, against Big Pork. In 2013, attorney Mona Wallace took on the case of 26-year-old Brandon Taylor, who died from toxic fumes while working at a Smithfield packing plant in Clinton, N.C. This case, which ended only in a fine for Smithfield, was the prelude to a series of major environmental nuisance cases. Over the decades, Smithfield, a food corporation giant, had brought five million hogs to four North Carolina counties, polluting the air and water with billions of gallons of hog urine and feces. The rural, mostly Black families who lived near the farms complained about the stench to no avail. Then, starting in 2018, Wallace and her colleagues brought five successive cases to court. Addison dramatically details the massive legal legwork involved, the heartbreaking stories of the families, the courtroom battles, and the intimidation tactics and social media smears by Smithfield. In 2020, after losing an appeal, Smithfield agreed to settle for an undisclosed amount and was forced to change its pork production for the betterment of the people and land of North Carolina. As John Grisham notes in his foreword, this David versus Goliath story has a happy ending. This high-stakes legal saga is a must-read. Agent: Daniel Baror, Baror International. (June)