In 1958, Edith Higgenbothum, a housewife in
Richland, Washington, downwind of the massive Hanford nuclear weapons
production site, discovers that the milk her young son Herbie drinks contains
radioactive iodine from Hanford's secret fallout releases. Radioactive iodine
can damage the thyroid, especially in children.
When Herbie is diagnosed with aggressive thyroid cancer, Edith allies with mothers of children with thyroid cancer and leukemia in communities blanketed by fallout from Nevada Test Site A-bomb tests on a true atomic age hero's journey to save the children.
Praise for Then Came the Summer Snow:
“In Trisha Pritikin’s crisp and sweeping novel, the Cold War comes home to live with a family in Richland, Washington. Not the Cold War of ideologies, but the one that included 2,000+ nuclear tests, and the production of hundreds of tons of plutonium; that contaminated our homes, food and communities; that actually took family members.”
~ Robert “Bo” Jacobs, Emeritus Professor of History at the Hiroshima
Peace Institute and Hiroshima City University, author of Nuclear
Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale 2022).
“Then Came the Summer Snow is like an unexpected gift in its surprise and freshness. Absurdity informs its realism, its poignancy, and its humor. A troubling, hilarious, weird, and wonderful novel.”
~ Mark Spencer, author of An Untimely Frost
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bOOqKE
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Trisha
is an internationally known advocate for fallout-exposed populations downwind
of nuclear weapons production and testing sites. She is an attorney and former
occupational therapist.
Trisha was born and raised in Richland, the government-owned atomic town closest to the Hanford nuclear weapons production facility in southeastern Washington State. Hanford manufactured the plutonium used in the Trinity Test, the world’s first test of an atomic bomb, detonated July 16,1945 at Alamogordo, NM, and for Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that decimated Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Beginning in late 1944, and for more than forty years thereafter, Hanford operators secretly released millions of curies of radioactive byproducts into the air and to the waters of the Columbia River, exposing civilians downwind and downriver. Hanford’s airborne radiation spread across eastern Washington, northern Oregon, Idaho, Western Montana, and entered British Columbia.
Trisha suffers from significant thyroid damage, hypoparathyroidism, and other disabling health issues caused by exposure to Hanford’s fallout in utero and during childhood. Infants and children are especially susceptible to the damaging effects of radiation exposure.
Trisha’s first book, The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice, published in 2020 by the University Press of Kansas, has won multiple awards, including San Francisco Book Festival, 1st place (history); Nautilus Silver award (journalism and investigative reporting); American Book Fest Book Awards Finalist (US History); Eric Hoffer Awards, Shortlist Grand Prize Finalist; and Chanticleer International Book Awards, 1st Place, (longform journalism). The Hanford Plaintiffs was released in Japanese in 2023 by Akashi Shoten Publishing House, Tokyo.
Author Links:
Website: www.trishapritikin.com
Twitter / X: https://x.com/TrishaPritikin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trishapritikinfightingback/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/triesq/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Trisha-T.-Pritikin/author/B086WVVNTY
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19583157.Trisha_T_Pritikin
Atomic Heritage Foundation Interview: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/trisha-pritikin/
