COSME- WOBURN SUMMER 1966

Book Review

The chapter plot kicked off by describing the Woburn community to be a typical
countryside rural town gearing towards commercialization and industrialization- averagely
progressive town with abundant trees and sits beside a river which provides a rich subterranean
water source for the households in the community. At the onset, the author talked about the
character of the town church minister, Reverend Young who will later become the spiritual
adviser of all the mother of the sick children, and provides assistance to the families in every way
he could.
The story mainly revolved around the family of Anne Anderson, which stemmed from a
mysterious illness which struck her son Jimmy, and was later on found out to be leukemia, at a
tender age of over three (3) years old. The burden, agony and difficulty of taking care of her
son’s medication and journey to fight the illness drew much of Anne’s awareness towards the
mysterious disease when she later on found out about the other cases of leukemia which befell
several families similar to her child’s case. Because of the coincidence she began formulating
theories about the cause of their children’s disease. Even before their children got sick, each
family noticed the bad taste and odor of the drinking water they were consuming. In Woburn,
there were twenty plus children who contracted lymphocytic leukemia between the years of 1960
and 1980, some of them died, including Jimmy, Anne’s son. The explanation as the parents’
suspicions for the contraction of the disease and even the death of some of the children was
discovered in the water, two municipal wells near the town were found to be contaminated with
toxic chemicals because of the dumping of the industrial factories operating inside the town. The
story described the difficulty of each family, especially the mothers, in going through their
children’s life-threatening diseases. Understandably, it is natural for parents to look for causes to
blame for their misfortunes especially that their children are still of tender age.

Upon their hypothesis, they will decide to file a class suit in the next chapter against the
two corporations who they accused of contaminating the water source.