In Full Body Burden, Kristen Iversen (Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth) tells the intertwined stories of her two greatest childhood fears: her father's alcoholism and Rocky Flats--for almost 40 years, the secret source of the plutonium "pits" at the center of hydrogen bombs. Located only a few miles from Iversen's childhood home in Bridledale, Colo., the plant loomed mysteriously in the local imagination. Few people actually knew what the plant produced; Iversen's mother guessed it made "cleaning supplies." While Bridledale and neighboring communities wore a veneer of suburban heaven, under the surface, children and adults were dying from exposure to the plant's radioactive contaminants--some quickly, others only after decades of exposure and long battles with cancer.
Meanwhile, within Iversen's own home, another kind of disintegration was at work in her father's unexplained nights "at the office," calls from the local police and the half-full bourbon bottles clumsily stashed throughout the house. Like her knowledge of Rocky Flats's radioactive threat, Iversen's realization that her father's alcoholism was the force tearing her family apart grew gradually.
Iversen weaves her lucid, heart-wrenching memoir of a family struggling to keep itself together with a keen exploration of the nuclear havoc wreaked by Rocky Flats. Together, the two tales create a powerful account of coming of age under a mushroom cloud. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket