"I want to write about the two things that have frightened me most in life..."
Kristen Iversen's Full Body Burden expertly and unflinchingly does exactly this, combining her memories of growing up in the shadow of a darkly charismatic, alcoholic father with her decades-long investigation of radioactive waste and contamination from the government's secret nuclear manufacturing facility at Rocky Flats, miles outside of Denver and minutes from Iversen's childhood home.
Iversen understands that the stories which begin with "I shouldn't be telling you this," are not only the most electrifying, but often the ones most in need of being heard. To that end, this book is an investigation of silence: of its mechanisms and motivations, the choices which support or expose it, and of the consequences of leaving silence to seethe. Full Body Burden is one of the most brilliantly compelling, gutsy works of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.
Publisher Crown
Publication Date 2012-06-05
Section New Hardcover - Biography / All Staff Suggestions / Margaret B.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780307955630
Full Body Burden is a haunting work of narrative nonfiction about a young woman, Kristen Iversen, growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." It's the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.
It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets--both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.
But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions. She learned about the infamous 1969 Mother's Day fire, in which a few scraps of plutonium spontaneously ignited and--despite the desperate efforts of firefighters--came perilously close to a "criticality," the deadly blue flash that signals a nuclear chain reaction. Intense heat and radiation almost melted the roof, which nearly resulted in an explosion that would have had devastating consequences for the entire Denver metro area. Yet the only mention of the fire was on page 28 of the Rocky Mountain News, underneath a photo of the Pet of the Week. In her early thirties, Iversen even worked at Rocky Flats for a time, typing up memos in which accidents were always called "incidents."
And as this memoir unfolds, it reveals itself as a brilliant work of investigative journalism--a detailed and shocking account of the government's sustained attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents' vain attempts to seek justice in court. Here, too, are vivid portraits of former Rocky Flats workers--from the healthy, who regard their work at the plant with pride and patriotism, to the ill or dying, who battle for compensation for cancers they got on the job.
Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book promises to have a very long half-life.
