Friendswood, Texas, a small town near the Gulf of Mexico, is well acquainted with the apocalyptic. When Rene Steinke’s novel of the same name opens, a hurricane has just devastated the area, and the shift in the water table has pushed a container of rusty-pink corrosive liquid to the surface from its secret home deep within the ground. “Hurricanes come with the territory, right?” local realtor Hal Holbrook says, trying to downplay the climate to a pair of wary buyers. Hal is less willing to acknowledge that virulent toxic waste is just as much a part of the area’s identity as the catastrophic