NECESSARY RISKS

When Nora Holing, a young veterinarian, moves to a small, northern California town, all she wants is a peaceful country life working with animals. What she gets is a wrenching moral and legal battle with her adopted town over the use of an agricultural chemical threatening the future of humans and animals. She risks her professional and personal life as she becomes an environmental activist and inspires those around her to win a small victory for the planet.

More a promising first draft than a polished novel, this Turner Tomorrow Award runner-up story about an environmentally minded veterinarian suffers from wooden characters and formulaic plotting. Narrator Nora Holing, introduced as an undergraduate at Berkeley, soon has completed grad school, suffered the death of her first love (a botanist investigating ecological damage in Kuwait) and begun her career at a veterinary clinic in Combsea, a northern California town. Nora doesn't consider herself an environmental activist, but she's shocked at goings-on in Combsea. Every spring, an anonymous chemical company sprays the area with Luminex, a "verdicide" that kills weeds and allegedly improves both grazing land and timber growth. It also causes miscarriages, birth defects and other unpleasant side effects in animals. Nora's outspoken opposition bring her up against townspeople whose livelihoods depend on the cattle and logging industries. Timely but insubstantial, this people-versus-profit tale by the co-author of Trauma Center fails to engage the reader emotionally.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A thin, terribly serious young veterinarian goes to Oregon and comes head-to-head with the horrors of herbicides in a thin, terribly serious eco-thriller. Skinny, terminally intense young friend-of-the-animals Nora Holing has the very worst luck. She was orphaned at an early age, and the great love of her life, a botanist, also skinny and terminally intense, fell victim to an Iraqi land mine while assessing the ecological aftermath of Desert Storm. Now her dream job at an Oregon clinic and her budding romance with the clinic's craggy founder are mortally threatened by her contact with Luminex, the chemical relied upon by the unspeakably evil lumber interests to kill everything but their piney crop. The slightest brush with Luminex causes terrible birth defects, spontaneous abortions, and stillbirths, but the villagers, having tried once to get the stuff banned and gotten thoroughly mauled by the lumber and ranching moguls for their efforts, have resigned themselves to Chernobylian lives. Jake, Nora's partner in the clinic, makes her swear she will keep her mouth shut about Luminex, but of course she doesn't. She is, after all, a woman of science. She is also pregnant and, while returning from a medical mission, she has been sprayed with the vile substance. Collecting horror stories from any place ever sprayed with Luminex and calling on the legal skills of her wheelchair-bound college housemate, a super-public-service lawyer, Nora tackles the lumber industry, the cattle industry, the chemical industry, the craven villagers, her now ex-partner at the clinic, and Luminex itself. She has a few gutsy, right-thinking allies, but that ought to be enough. Perfect reading for Ralph Nader's next beach trip. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Nora Holing was orphaned when her 1960s activist parents died in an accident. She resents their having become involved in environmental issues and dying before she really knew them. But she is forced to confront her feelings when, as a veterinarian in a small town, her life and the lives of those around her are threatened by an agricultural chemical. Nora follows in her parents' footsteps and puts her career, reputation, and life on the line to work with her college friend Eileen in building a case against the chemical company. Nora also has to face the resentment of town residents who see their livelihood threatened. Keller has coauthored two other books: Trauma Center , with Ed Storti (Crown, 1988), and Crisis Intervention , with Randall Sword (Scribner, 1984). In her first solo attempt, she provides a thoughtful book for introspective readers. Recommended for larger collections.
- Karen Stewart, Colorado Legislative Council Lib., Denver
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.