An Unreasonable Woman

For the Media

For Immediate Release

An Unreasonable Woman
A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas

Contact: Jon-Mikel Gates at jgates@chelseagreen.com, 802-295-6300, ext. 111.

The Gripping True Story of One Woman's Fight to Save Her Town and Her Way of Life from Deadly Industrial Chemicals

“I have never read a book quite like this one, and worry already that I might not yet again. An Unreasonable Woman is one of the most powerful works of nonfiction I can remember reading in many years and will stand as one of this nation's greatest works of nonfiction”

—Rick Bass, award-winning author of The Hermit’s Story and Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

Meet Diane Wilson, a new and powerful voice with an extraordinary story to tell. Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimp-boat captain from Seadrift, Texas, who took on big industrial polluters and won. Her book, An Unreasonable Woman, to be published on Labor Day, is the tale of her journey from "nobody particular" to a leading player in the fight to clean up industry and hold it accountable for the devastation it causes.

Fired by her outrage at the injustice and corruption that were killing her people and her bays, Wilson launched a campaign against a multi-billion-dollar corporation that had been covering up spills, silencing workers, flaunting the EPA, and dumping lethal ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride into the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast.

She takes her fight to the courts, to the gates of the chemical plant, and to the halls of power in Austin and Houston. Along the way she meets with scorn, bribery, and death threats. Finally, Wilson realizes that she must break the law to win justice.

An Unreasonable Woman is a page-turner to rival the stories of Erin Brockovich or Karen Silkwood: “ordinary” women who make an extraordinary difference. Wilson’s vivid South Texas dialogue resides somewhere between Alice Walker and William Faulkner, and her dazzling prose brings to mind the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, replete with dreams and prophesies. Wilson is another in a line of untrained southern writers whose ear for the cadences of words and deep understanding of her people and birthplace entrance readers with their vibrant honesty.

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation commercial fisherwoman and mother of five, has been an activist since 1989. Her story will be featured this summer in Vanity Fair. This is her first book.

Book available, September 2005 | Hardcover | $27.50 | 1-931498-88-1 | 6 x 9 | 400 pages

For more information please visit www.chelseagreen.com/2005/items/unreasonablewoman