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Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, by Kristen Iversen
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Full Body Burden is Kristen Iversen's story of growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant. It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets—both family secrets and government secrets. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what they 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.
As this memoir unfolds, it reveals itself as a brilliant work of investigative journalism—a 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. 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.
Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content
- Sales Rank: #84117 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Broadway Books
- Published on: 2013-06-04
- Released on: 2013-06-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 432 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with the Author
Why did you write the book?
Rocky Flats was the big secret of my childhood. No one knew what they did at the plant; the rumor in the neighborhood was that they made household cleaning products. We knew nothing about radioactive and toxic contamination. My childhood was also shadowed by the secrecy surrounding my father’s alcoholism. My family was very close and loving but also troubled. I wrote the book to learn what really happened at Rocky Flats, to learn everything I could about plutonium pits and nuclear weapons and the crucial role the plant played during and after the Cold War. I also wanted to understand my family and the broader context of what it meant to grow up during the seventies. Secrecy at the level of the community and at the level of family turned out to be a central theme in the book.
One of the great ironies of my life is that I spent several years as a travel writer in Europe, looking for good stories to write about, and the biggest story turned out to be—quite literally—in my own backyard. My family and our neighbors were “Cold War warriors,” as the plutonium workers themselves were called, but no one told us.
How is Rocky Flats a global issue?
The 2011 accident at Fukushima, following the tsunami, reminded the world in a terrible way that we cannot ignore the threat of radioactive contamination, whether it comes from nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons sites. The world has experienced many nuclear disasters in recent years, including accidents at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, the Mayak facility in Russia (the “sister” plant to Rocky Flats), Rocky Flats in Colorado, and other former nuclear weapons sites around the United States such as Hanford and Fernald. The health effects of short-term, high-level radioactive contamination are fairly well known. What are the health costs of long-term, low-level radioactive exposure? Scientists and physicists continue to debate the topic, but one fact is for sure: there is no safe level of exposure to plutonium. One millionth of a gram, particularly if it is inhaled, can cause cancer.
Rocky Flats happened in my backyard, but in a sense it is happening in everyone’s back yard. Many of us live in close proximity to former nuclear weapons sites or nuclear power plants with inadequate safety provisions. And, at a time when we are supposed to be decreasing our nuclear arsenal, the U.S. government is talking about producing nuclear triggers again. We need to pay attention.
Was it hard to write so intimately about your family?
I believe that the most powerful way to tell a story is through personal, everyday experience. Every person on the planet has a story that is both ordinary and extraordinary. My siblings and I swam in the lake behind our house and rode our horses in the fields. We had, in many ways, a blessed childhood. And this kind of experience is one that many readers will share. What makes our story unique is that it connects, in ways that we never anticipated, to a broader historical and political narrative. The story of the 1969 fire at Rocky Flats—which very nearly destroyed the entire metro Denver area—is all the more powerful when you realize that my family was having a very pleasant Mother’s Day brunch at a nearby restaurant. We had no idea what was going on—and neither did other Coloradoans. It was only by including the experiences of me, my family, my neighbors, and my coworkers at Rocky Flats that I could truly bring the story to life. It was indeed a challenge to write intimately about things that, as a family, we were never supposed to discuss, including my father’s drinking. And yet the end result was a tremendous sense of clarity and understanding.
What surprised you most during your research for the book?
I was surprised, and continue to be surprised, by the secrecy surrounding this very dramatic story. What happened at Rocky Flats, during the Cold War and up to the present moment, is crucially important not only to Colorado but to the entire country. But so much of the story has been hidden over the years, and now it is in danger of being forgotten. Recently I stayed at a hotel just a few miles from the Rocky Flats site, and the young man at the front desk had grown up in Colorado. He’d never heard of Rocky Flats. Of those people who do know the story--or part of it--many believe that Rocky Flats is old history, that it’s irrelevant and insignificant. They believe the land is safe and the story is over. After all, you can’t see or smell plutonium.
Yet we cannot forget the story of Rocky Flats. The effects will linger far into the future. There were many other surprises too. During my research, I was shocked to discover how many tons of MUF, or “Missing Unaccounted For” plutonium, was missing, even to the present day. And the history of the 1989 FBI raid on Rocky Flats is fascinating. I believe it’s the only time in the history of the United States that two government agencies--the FBI and the EPA--have raided another agency, the Department of Energy.
Review
Winner of the 2013 Colorado Book Award
Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction
A Mother Jones Best Book of 2012
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012
An Atlantic Monthly Best Book about Justice
"Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era--as personal and powerful as "Silkwood," told with the suspense and narrative drive of The Hot Zone. With unflinching honesty, Kristen Iverson has written 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. Rocky Flats needs to be part of the same nuclear discussion as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. So does Full Body Burden. It's an essential and unforgettable book that should be talked about in schools and book clubs, online and in the White House."
—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
"What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Plus the facts are solid and the science told in colloquial but never dumbed-down terms. If I could afford them, I'd want the movie rights. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?"
—Mark Hertsgaard, author of Nuclear Inc. and HOT
"This terrifyingly brilliant book--as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core--is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age."
—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Atlantic
"Why didn't Poe or Hitchcock think of this? Full Body Burden has all the elements of a classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling. Kristen Iversen has lived this life and is an authority on the culture of secrecy that has prevented the nation from knowing the truth about radioactive contamination. This is a gripping and scary story."
—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country
"Kristen Iversen has written a hauntingly beautiful memoir that is also a devastating investigation into the human costs of building and living with the atomic bomb. 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, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
"The fight over Rocky Flats was and is a paradigmatic American battle, of corporate and government power set against the bravery and anger of normal people. This is 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
"Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Full Body Burden is a tale that will haunt your dreams. It's a story of secrecy, deceit, and betrayal set in the majestic high plains of Colorado. Kristen Iversen takes us behind her family's closed doors and beyond the security fences and the armed guards at Rocky Flats. She's as honest and restrained in her portrait of a family in crisis as she is in documenting the incomprehensible betrayal of citizens by their government, in exposing the harrowing disregard for public safety exhibited by the technocrats in charge of a top-secret nuclear weapons facility. For decades the question asked by residents living downwind of the plant was 'Would my government deliberately put my life and the lives of my children in danger?' The simple and irrefutable answer was 'Yes, it would . . . in a Colorado minute.'"
—John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little
“This is a subject as grippingly immediate as today's headlines: While there is alarm about the small rise in radioactivity in the food chain, one reads in these pages about how a whole region lived in the steady contaminating effects of nuclear radiation. Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave, an expose about ignorance and denial and the cost of government excess, and an intensely personal portrait of a family. It ought to be required reading for every single legislator in this country.”
—Richard Bausch, author of Peace and Something Is Out There
About the Author
KRISTEN IVERSEN grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility. She is director of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Memphis. Visit her website at KristenIversen.com.
Most helpful customer reviews
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
The burden of silence
By saltwise
Full Body Burden could have been named conspiracy of silence it that had not already been used.
Kristen Iversen follows silence throughout this very important book: the silence within a fractured family; the silence of the wind-swept high plains reaching toward the Colorado rocky mountains; and the worst silence of all, that knowing silence putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk as our own government lied to further its own ends.
As a historian this book shames me. Nearly forty years after the Mississippi summer it dawned on me I could have joined in that effort. I was 18. I knew about it. It didn't make the connection. Not so many years after that, living about 20 miles south of Rocky Flats, I knew but didn't make the effort to understand what was happening. And this book shames me.
For the most part the local news media was silent, as were our elected leaders. Only too few "kooks" recognized some of the dangers. However, they thought it building nuclear weapons was immoral and wrong. Not until the FBI raid and the heroic and still silenced grand jury, did we all learn of the real danger--the vast careless contamination of the air, water and soil affecting so very many.
Silence is the true enemy of this country.
Reading Full Body Burden is one way to break the silence. It is a very strong addition to the history of the cold war and the nuclear industry in this country.
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Epic sprawl, personal touch, and important civic knowledge
By Nathan Webster
Author Kristen Iversen's 12 years of research is evident in this fairly epic look at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon's factory, and the contamination, cancer and dishonesty the facility left behind. But, this is the price for a nation's protective nuclear arsenal - the weapons have to be built somewhere, and Rocky Flats was the source for the nuclear warhead's plutonium 'triggers.'
The 'villain' of the piece is of course the government and the private companies - Dow Chemical, for example - that willfully kept secrets from the close-by Denver population, pretending the facility was much safer than it was, and that the health effects were minimal. A grand jury's recommended criminal indictment was ignored, and at the book's conclusion, an appeals court overturns a mammoth legal judgement in resident's favor.
None of this is really a surprise. But it's depressing to see how local communities are ignored - or worse, how decent jobs are considered more important than long-term health. Thousands of perfectly content workers are at the plant; had they up and quit one day in protest, maybe they could have changed things. But that never happens; in fact, Iversen shows several cases where whistle-blowers were threatened by their fellow workers, scared the plant would close and take away their jobs. So it's easy to blame the companies and the government, but we're the ones who sit idly by.
This part of the story should anger and disgust readers, but we should not be surprised that a nuclear program designed to try and protect the entire country would have been unwilling to sacrifice the health of a few towns.
The book's parallel thread is Iversen's childhood in the community, and dealing with an alcoholic father. Her personal memoir does not connect that closely with her nuclear narrative, but it's an interesting look at the real lives going on in the "shadow" of the nuclear facility.
I liked how she kept going back and forth between her research and her memoir. It kept the story from falling too much into impersonal reportage - but also from being too personal, without a larger story. She shifts between these "big" and "small" aspects very often, usually every few pages. I liked the book's quick pace.
For me, her personal story wasn't quite as meaningful, especially stacked against the epic sprawl of legal cases, revelations and citizen-led protests. Her memoir was necessary for this to be a compelling "human" story, but I was much more interested in her reportage than her life. Her decade-plus of research is very clear on the page, and this book's earned its credibility. It has an anti-nuclear agenda, but facts are facts, and her narrative raises important questions.
I read a lot of books about Iraq, where I embedded as a journalist a few times. I believe that citizens should read books about Iraq not even just to enjoy them, but to see what they helped fund and support - that was a trillion dollars and then some that we spent there, and people should know where that money went.
I feel the same way about this book. The missiles and weapons that "protected" us during the Cold War did not come for free. People had to build them, using the most poisonous materials on Earth. We might look at Japan and Chernobyl and say, "oh, good thing it didn't happen here." But - events DID happen, just not as dramatic as a meltdown.
So readers owe it to themselves to seek out a book like this, and read about choices and compromises that are required to live in a free society. These are the choices the government made, but it certainly didn't put the decision up to an open vote with all the facts on the table. "Full Body Burden" gives a look behind that curtain, and it isn't very pretty. People will give up a lot for a steady paycheck; maybe too much.
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Deserves to be a best seller!
By Trudie Barreras
There is absolutely no way to do this book justice in a brief review. It accomplishes what would seem to be impossibility - combining an intimate and elegant personal memoir with a powerful and incredibly important documentary.
Although I was not brought up in the near vicinity of Rocky Flats, my own childhood was indeed overshadowed in more ways than one by "The Bomb". I was a six-year-old living in Gallup, NM, at the time of the Trinity Test. My mother was pregnant with my younger sister at the time. The pre-dawn concussion of that blast woke her out of a sound sleep, and she always swore that it was the first time she felt the baby kick. The commandant of Ft. Wingate Ordinance Depot where my father worked as a civilian employee was panicked because he thought the explosion must have occurred on-site in some of their munitions bunkers. I remember the ongoing nightmares of a child with the threat of nuclear weapons being discussed on the radio (we didn't have a TV). Of course, with Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque where my parents lived after the war, and Los Alamos only 70 miles or so to the north, we always knew we'd be in one of the primary target areas in case of attack.
But - and this is the crucial point made so brilliantly in Iversen's magnificent narrative - there was no inkling of the incredible cover-up of the dangers of simply BUILDING the bombs that were meant to provide our deterrent capability. Although I lived in New Mexico and Arizona during a good part of the time so carefully described in this story, I had no clue about anything of significance occurring at Rocky Flats. Even the massive demonstrations in 1978 seem to have completely escaped my notice, although I was tuned in to many of the other politically significant events in that time-frame.
A number of years ago I read a book about the Hanford site and was completely appalled by the stupidity, negligence, and deceptiveness that occurred there. Obviously, though, Rocky Flats is in the same category, perhaps even more deplorable. While Iversen notes the two "worst" nuclear disasters to date are the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi power plant accidents, she cites the "third worst" as the explosion of an underground storage tank for nuclear waste in Khyshtym, near the Kayak plant in Russia. She points out that in all these instances, there has been "the same troubling pattern of government silence and misinformation." I would comment that clearly a major threat has always been and will continue to be failure to deal with proper containment of nuclear waste, and even when plants are closed down this issue remains!
It is my profound belief that we as citizens need to know the truth about the real risks resulting from our burgeoning nuclear industry both for peaceful and for wartime uses. Only then can intelligent political decisions be made. For her contributions to the dialog, Kristen Iversen not only deserves a medal of honor, but also to have her book become a runaway best seller!
I have just heard a magnificent interview with the author on the Public Radio program "Fresh Air", broadcsst on my local public radio station, WABE, in Atlanta, Georgia on June 12. Kristen Iversen interviews as well as she writes, and as I said above, this book deserves to be a best seller and Iversen deserves all the recognition she can possibly receive for her work.
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