I won a copy of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen as part of a firstreads giveaway. In it, Iversen tells the dual stories of growing up in a family that keeps secrets, in the vicinity of a secret government nuclear facility.

I thought when I started this book that it was going to focus on the Rocky Flats facility, and the radioactive pollution that effected the residential areas surrounding. I expected a dry recount of facts, or a personal memoir of cancer to follow. Luckily, I was incorrect, nor was this a "woe is me" personal memoir, although Iversen does recount her personal story. It is the perfect balance between an environmental catastrophe (currently happening or waiting to happen, depending on who you ask) and a personal narrative. It never feels too technical, or too self-indulgent. Full Body Burden covers a time in our nation's history, when the Cold War demanded sacrifices from unwitting citizens in the name of defense, up to the present, when those citizens continue to ask why they weren't alerted to the sacrifices they were making as radioactive material contaminated their neighborhoods. At times, the prose reminded me of Silent Spring, beautifully recounting insidious contamination, and its predictable effects.

What I found most striking, however, was how I related to Iversen's perspective on Rocky Flats nuclear facility. She has the indifference typical of one who has been taught not to question authority and to complain and is overwhelmed by information. For much of the novel, Iversen repeats what she has been told since childhood, that nothing dangerous is coming from Rocky Flats, that the government wouldn't do anything dangerous without telling its citizens. When confronted with evidence, and mounting protests, Iversen doesn't know how to respond, and so for a long time she doesn't engage with the issue at all. This struck me as so honest, such a real reaction to an overwhelming situation, and I really appreciated that.

I normally hate memoirs because I find them self-aggrandizing, or worse, self-indulgent, but I really enjoyed this book, and was fascinated by the story of Rocky Flats.