Atomic Family
In 24 hours in 1961, everything changes for the Porter family. Dean, an agronomist, works at a nuclear bomb plant, testing soil, groundwater, and even collected baby teeth for evidence of nuclear contamination. His wife, Nellie, is discontent with her role as a housewife and mother and with the growing distance between her and Dean. Both stumble under the weight of expectations but have lost the words to tell one another.
Ignored, ten-year-old Wilson has convinced himself that he’s the only thing standing between communism and the safety of his small town. The day after a failed Halloween party, the Porters go about their day, Dean distracted, Nellie unhappy, and Wilson determined to root out neighborhood communists. A new report on the plant’s waste storage lands on Dean’s desk, and he struggles with whether to risk his job by revealing the results. Nellie, bored and feeling cut out of Dean’s work, spontaneously joins an anti-nuclear protest, not sure she agrees but desperate to believe in something. And Wilson, sure that a communist attack is imminent, climbs the town’s water tower to watch for planes. Though they go their separate ways in the morning, by nightfall an unspeakable tragedy has brought the family together.
Atomic Family is an intensely moving and emotional book. The characters are imperfect and, as we see each through one another’s narration, worthy of both condemnation and sympathy. Ciera Horton McElroy wraps their unhappiness in stark and lyrical prose. Her use of the tight timeline is neatly done and effective, giving a snapshot of the nuclear family and the nuclear age through a single day’s events. It’s 24 hours of expectations and shocks, of unwelcome knowledge and unfounded paranoia, of memories, grudges, and guilt. A 24 hours where, for one family, everything implodes.
