Amity and Prosperity

One Family and the Fracturing of America

By: Eliza Griswold

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction*

Prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity is an expose on how fracking shattered a rural Pennsylvania town, and how one lifelong resident brought the story into the national spotlight. This is an incredible true account of investigative journalism and a devastating indictment of energy politics in America.

Stacey Haney, a lifelong resident of Amity, Pennsylvania, is struggling to support her children when the fracking boom comes to town. Like most of her neighbors, she sees the energy companies’ payments as a windfall. Soon trucks are rumbling down her unpaved road and a fenced-off fracking site rises on adjacent land. But her annoyance gives way to concern and then to fear as domestic animals and pets begin dying and mysterious illnesses strike her family—despite the companies’ insistence that nothing is wrong.

Griswold masterfully chronicles Haney’s transformation into an unlikely whistle-blower as she launches her own investigation into corporate wrongdoing. As she takes her case to court, Haney inadvertently reveals the complex rifts in her community and begins to reshape its attitudes toward outsiders, corporations, and the federal government. Amity and Prosperity uses her gripping and moving tale to show the true costs of our energy infrastructure and to illuminate the predicament of rural America in the twenty-first century.

Compelling writing and story

This book is written like a novel though it is a reporter’s coverage of the effects of the fracking industry in Pennsylvania. The reader’s voice took me a while to get used to, and the story itself carried me beyond my initial annoyance with her tone. This story is heart rending and brings to our awareness the prices that some pay for our privilege. I highly recommend this author and this book.

A scary story

These circumstances, I feel, could have happened to any struggling family in America. Honest, well-meaning families taken in and taken advantage of by unethical corporations consumed with greed. A sad and well-told story.

Enjoyed this book. Very thought-provoking and well written.

Enjoy this book. Very thought-provoking and well written. Very much enjoyed the thoroughness of her research.

Exceptional Book, heart breaking story

The author accurately details a scenario played out often across the US landscape, that rarely gets told. Flint and Amity are not the exception, they are becoming the rule...

Wake up!

I rarely write reviews.. however I was moved after finishing this book. So sad to listen to these family’s struggles. A MUST LISTEN!