THE CHORNOBYL JOADS: WHY I WROTE “THE SKY UNWASHED”
First responders carrying a “closed zone” sign following the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, April 26, 1986. (Photo courtesy of the Ukrainian National Chornobyl Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine).
My first published novel, THE SKY UNWASHED is based on a true story. The heroines are a group of elderly women who returned to their deserted and highly contaminated village in the “dead zone,” the areas surrounding the Chornobyl (Ukrainian transliteration of “Chernobyl”) nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Those surrounding, mostly rural areas were highly irradiated after the core of reactor number four exploded on April 26, 1986 at 1:23 a.m. causing fires, a nuclear meltdown, and sending out a radioactive cloud that blanketed Ukraine, Belarus, Scandinavia, Western Europe and beyond.
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Helicopter view of the Chornobyl nuclear explosion, April, 1986. (Photo courtesy of the Ukrainian National Chornobyl Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine).
My fictional family, the Petrinkos headed by the matriarch Marusia, lived in one of those villages along with her son, Yurko, and daughter-in-law Zosia and their two young children. Yurko and Zosia worked at the Chornobyl power plant and despite their bickering, life was relatively peaceful in their lives until that horrible night in April.
The villagers were not evacuated until a week later and told that they would only be gone for a few days. Most of them never returned to their highly irradiated homes. But Marusia did, and she returned only to find herself alone in a toxic ghost-village and in the deadliest place on the planet.
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Irene Zabytko in front of the destroyed nuclear reactor now rebuilt and encased, Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Chornobyl, Ukraine. (Photo: Irene Zabytko collection).
Later, other displaced village women also returned and together they defy the Soviet authorities facing arrest and the end of their lives.
I first got the idea for my book after reading an article in The Ukrainian Weekly about the displaced Chornobyl evacuees who illegally returned to the most toxic place on the planet because they had nowhere to go. I thought—I must write about this…
But I didn’t begin writing until after I happened to be re-reading John Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH and was blown away by how elegant and profound the opening chapter was. I wanted to write something as fabulous as that book, so I basically followed and mirrored Steinbeck’s writing about the men and women who were tilling the Oklahoma red earth before the dust storms came and they were forced to leave, and then turned it into my men and women tilling their own earth in Ukraine before Chornobyl exploded and they were also forced to leave.
In Steinbeck’s novel, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, the Joads, an Oklahoma farm family, are forced off their land because of a serious draught (the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s), and unscrupulous bankers. They leave their home to journey to California and become itinerant farmers where they are exploited by the landowners.
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Evacuees leaving the “dead zone” after the Chornobyl nuclear reactor explosion. ( (Photo courtesy of the Ukrainian National Chornobyl Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine).
My characters suffer a similar fate. Chornobyl’s own destructive chain reaction caused them to leave their ancestral land, and displacing the villagers who are lied to in the process. No one ever knew how toxic the nuclear radiation was and so when Marusia and later a few more women return, they had to make life and death choices.
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Irene Zabytko in front of the abandoned ferris wheel in Pripiat, Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (Photo: Irene Zabytko collection).
Now looking back and re-reading my own novel on this 32nd anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident, I am reminded of my gratitude to Steinbeck for forging the literary territory that encouraged and enabled me to write a story that I hope is still relevant, and most importantly, universal–especially for those in the entire world who are still being displaced, powerless, and forgotten because they happened to have their homes situated in the middle of a cataclysmic event they had nothing to do with.
SOURCES:
THE SKY UNWASHED is available on Amazon.com http://amzn.to/1MbANHp, www.irenezabytko.com, and wherever books are sold.
Portions of this blog post originally appeared in THE FICTION PRESCRIPTION: HOW TO WRITE AND IMPROVE YOUR FICTION LIKE THE GREAT LITERARY MASTERS. Available on Amazon.com http://amzn.to/211kQhZ and www.irenezabytko.com
More information about Chornobyl and THE SKY UNWASHED can be found at www.irenezabytko.com and www.lifeinthedeadzone.com
Many thanks to the Ukrainian National Museum “Chornobyl,” Kyiv Ukraine, for the use of their archival photos. http://chornobylmuseum.kiev.ua/en/mainpage/
The Ukrainian Weekly is an English language publication with great, factual reportage of Ukraine-related news. http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/
