This is basically a legal case as is most of his fiction, and it would be difficult to make up many of these true events. Allan Elias owned a fertilizer plant in the nineties and did everything he could to avoid following safety regulations. He hired young high school graduates, did not adequately train them on safety procedures and sent them into hazardous situations. In 1996, Scott Dominguez felt ill after climbing into one of Elias' storage pits and was nervous to do it again the next day. Since he was one of two men small enough to fit into the hole, Elias insisted that he finish the job. When the men asked for safety equipment Elias refused, saying they always lost their equipment. Since he never had given them any, that was just one of the many obvious lies and excuses he used.
When Young Scott Domingues finally agreed to go down into the pit for fear of losing his job if he refused, he did so reluctantly. He eventually passed out in the hole, was eventually rescued and sustained brain damage from Cyanide poisoning. Co-author Hildorfer was an Environmental Protection Agency Investigator at the time, and his memories along with others involved with the case help the reader follow every detail of this disgraceful case.
The authors do a good job building up the characters in this case, and I felt I knew the personalities of many of the key ones. We see that Hildorfer was frustrated after a two year case that got very little results, and he initially didn't want to take this case. After seeing Scott's suffering however, he relented, and with his partner he joined the Boise assistant U. S. Attorney, and a brilliant attorney from the Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section. Together they found that Elais had been polluting Idaho for the better part of a decade without a thought about who he was harming. He had escaped jail time even though he had been caught several times, and these brave and tireless men were determined to lock him up.
This is a well written and informative book that needs to be read. We must insist that safety standards are adhered to for the health of those who work to contribute to the needs of our society, and after reading this book I realize that there are too many people who just don't care.
- Beverly
Publisher - Free Press
Date of Publication - September 14, 2004