Full Body Burden - by Kristen Iversen (Paperback)

About the Book

"Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2012"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

"An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security."--Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

A "powerful" (The New York Times) account of the government's attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community's vain search for justice--soon to be a feature documentary

WINNER OF THE COLORADO BOOK AWARD AND THE READING THE WEST BOOK AWARD

Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is 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--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions and discovered some disturbing realities.

Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book is both captivating and unnerving.

A KIRKUS REVIEWS AND MOTHER JONES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Review Quotes

"Intimate . . . powerful . . . a potent examination of the dangers of secrecy."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A beautiful memoir that recognizes the inevitable intrusion of greater social forces in all of our lives and the risk we take in ignoring them."--Denver Post

"[Full Body Burden] is impressively researched, but it's also impressively readable. . . . An important contribution to both nuclear literature and memoir."--Orion

"A deft rebellion against the silences, public and intimate, that have proven disastrous for [Iversen's] community."--Mother Jones

"A striking tale of innocence in a time and a place of great danger."--The Atlantic

"A shocking and salutary coming-of-age memoir . . . A meticulously researched and compelling narrative of growing up in the 'sacrifice' zone of America's nuclear weapons programme . . . One of those rare, life-changing works whose quiet, insistent moral authority commands us to read on and to remember."--Telegraph (UK)

"An intriguing mix of memoir and first-class investigative journalism . . . Mad Men meets Erin Brockovich."--Independent (UK)

"A carefully pruned memoir . . . [Iversen's] greatest feat, beyond her clear exposition of decades of scientific mismanagement, is to explain our capacity to ignore what seems too deeply embedded to fix."--Portland Mercury

"[Iversen's] book is simultaneously a careful memoir of a haunted childhood and a ferocious interrogation of deliberate environmental and public health neglect, and its slow revelation of family and government secrets has the hypnotic force of a horror story."--Maryn McKenna, Wired

"Intimate . . . [Iversen's] blending of fact-based reporting with such narrative warmth is no small achievement."--Salon

"Iversen seems to have been destined to write this shocking and infuriating story of a glorious land and a trusting citizenry poisoned by Cold War militarism and 'hot' contamination, secrets and lies, greed and denial. . . . News stories come and go. It takes a book of this exceptional caliber to focus our attention and marshal our collective commitment to preventing future nuclear horrors."--Booklist (starred review)

"With meticulous reporting and a clear eye for details, Iversen has crafted a chilling, brilliantly written cautionary tale about the dangers of blind trust. . . . Full Body Burden is both an engrossing memoir and a powerful piece of investigative journalism."--BookPage

"What makes this book so powerful is not only this persistent revealing of the truth, but also Iversen's ability to shift gears from the journalistic and factual to the aesthetic and metaphorical."--Brevity

"Poignant and gracefully written, Iversen shows us what it meant to come of age next door to Rocky Flats--America's plutonium bomb factory. The story is at once terrifying and outrageous."--Kai Bird, coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

"A powerful and beautiful account, of great use to all of us who will fight the battles that lie ahead."--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth

About the Author

Kristen Iversen grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver. She is head of the PhD program in Literary Nonfiction at the University of Cincinnati. During the summers, she serves on the faculty of the MFA Low-Residency Program at the University of New Orleans, held in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is also the author of Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Biography and the Barbara Sudler Award for Nonfiction. Iversen has two sons and lives in Cincinnati.