Harr to Set Off Lecture Series

Jonathan Harr, local writer and author of "A Civil Action," winner of the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award, will present the inaugural lecture in the new series, "Sundays at Two," sponsored by the Friends of Forbes Library and Smith College. The talk will be at 2 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, at Forbes Library.

Harr's book, which is the basis for a film starring John Travolta to be released on Christmas Day, tells the story of Jan Schlichtmann, a young lawyer who spent nine years representing eight families from Woburn, Mass., who claimed that their children got leukemia from drinking water poisoned with toxic chemicals dumped by local companies.

Ultimately one of the companies, Beatrice Foods, was cleared and Schlichtmann, whose firm was in financial ruin as a result of the lengthy suit and his own lavish spending habits, was forced to settle with the other company, W.R. Grace & Co. for $8 million. Of the settlement, the Woburn families saw less than half the money. The rest--$2.6 million in expenses and $2.2 million in legal fees--went to Schlichtmann and his partners.

Harr spent eight years writing "A Civil Action," which after a slow start, became a nonfiction blockbuster that has sold a million copies since 1995. Described recently in a New York Times story as "a meticulous reporter with a novelist's gift for narrative [who] fashioned a legal thriller out of an enormously complex case," Harr's fortunes have been enhanced both by the book's sales and the sale of the film rights to Robert Redford and the Walt Disney Company for $1.25 million.

During his "Sundays at Two" talk, Harr will describe the personal odyssey that resulted in the book and discuss "what people see in the book-what they take away from it."

A Northampton resident since 1981 when he came here to be editor of the Valley Advocate, Harr has since worked for New England Monthly and the Boston Globe. His wife is an art teacher at the Smith Campus School.

Harr's lecture is the first of three in the Smith/Forbes series. The other two "Sundays at Two" lectures will be presented by Linda Shaughnessy, author of children's books about young athletes, February 28, and Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books at Smith, April 25. All lectures are open free to the public.