Some There Are Fearless

by Becca Babcock

Jessica Manchaky’s life has been shaped by the threat of nuclear disaster. She's a child when she hears news of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the disappearance of Ukrainian relatives, growing up on a northern Alberta military base during the Cold War. From that moment on, all she wants is to keep danger at bay. 

But living in a household with a domineering and volatile mother and a rebellious older brother in isolated Cold Lake, Alberta, Jessica never feels fully safe. When she comes of age, she leaves her suffocating small town for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she meets her future husband and eventually becomes a nuclear engineer in charge of risk assessment and management at nuclear power plants. But even as she shields the world from nuclear disaster, she is constantly facing personal tragedies—like a strained marriage, a misogynistic workplace, and severe postpartum anxiety—that she never quite manages to predict. When her young daughter is afflicted with a mysterious and potentially deadly illness, Jessica must learn to accept that not all risk can be managed.

Beginning with the threat of the Cold War and the ripple effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and punctuated by other disasters both natural and manmade, Some There Are Fearless is an intimate and vulnerable exploration of the thin line between control and chaos from the author of the “terrific debut” (Globe and Mail) One Who Has Been Here Before.

Genres: Canada

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2023

Reviews

[Laurie Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Some There Are Fearless" by Becca Babcock is a new release from @vagrantpress an imprint of @nimbuspub and was just released a few weeks ago. It is a deep and moving story, one that often felt almost too close to comfort for many reasons (location, strained relationships with mothers, loss) but a novel with lovely writing and surprising and suspenseful bits. There is a lot about engineering, something I thought I had absolutely no interest in, but it worked, and I was taken in by explorations of the post Chernobyl era, and nuclear power. You will pause and reflect on what it means to be alive, and ponder the very small crack between the worlds of what you can control, and what you can't.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jessica Manchaky is a nuclear engineer obsessed with mitigating risk, controlling everything in her life that can be controlled—surprise, that's very little. Raised by a cold brittle single mother whose rages were rarely predictable, and bitingly devastating, she grew up turning inward, unable to relate to her rebelling older brother and staking her worth on good grades and affection meted out sparingly by her family.

When she learns of a distant familial connection to the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl as a child, nuclear energy and its safety becomes a lifelong fixation that leads to a career in engineering and a life full of personal disasters she absolutely can't predict, and at times seems barely able to process fully. As a partner, friend and mother, Jessica walks a thin line, never quite the person she aims to be, always with her mother's acidic voice in her head, so afraid of becoming just like her. When her daughter faces a health scare, she has to come to terms with the nature of life, her identity as a mother and how her need for control has limited the life she has led so far.

Some There Are Fearless beautifully intertwines the strings of Jessica's experience throughout her life: from childhood and the contentious relationship with her mother, through university, as a young professional and into her unfulfilling relationship with the soft-spoken and criminally underwhelming Adam which results in a daughter she can't seem to relate to or parent to her own ideals. I found myself wanting more for Jessica and then frustrated with the way she would treat the people in her life, turning against her in my mind, like her having to police her own thoughts, I'd also find myself nodding along with her misfortune like yep that's what you deserve. Often, I maybe found her a bit too relatable, pushing away the love in her life, preferring to go it alone and wonder at her own misery.

This was a great novel, I teared up towards the end, and I was so interested in the nuclear disasters and her life as an engineer in a male dominated industry, which I didn't think I'd be so invested in. But, my favourite part of the book by far was her childhood and her mother. So tense and yearning. Highly recommend.

[Tim Covell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is brilliantly crafted. The main character, Jessica, is an engineer in the field of power generation, obsessed with safety in all aspects of her life, a perfectionist, and haunted by failures like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (with which she has a family connection). We get insights into those failures, the field of power generation, and the less novel challenges of being a smart woman in a male-dominated field.

In addition to an interesting main character, the story has a complex structure. We start with Jessica as a child and her struggles with her single mother, then jump to Jessica as a single mother, caring for her daughter, who has suffered an injury of some sort. Chapters roughly alternate between these two merging timelines, but jump around to various events in the Jessica's life. The structure works well to build suspense and maintain character interest in a plot that would be thin if presented in chronological order. The book is like a jig-saw puzzle, examining various interesting pieces and gradually seeing it come together, including pieces that you never thought you'd find, or that fit in a surprising place.

This is explicitly a story about mothers and daughters. As the first of a few short factual inserts explains, the products of radioactive decay are called daughter isotopes, which might be stable or might decay further. This wonderfully sets the tone for the book.

[Kala Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book held me so captivated the entire time I was reading it -- the shifts between the main character's childhood in Cold Lake, Alberta and her burgeoning adult life in Halifax, Nova Scotia were so well handled. Jess' obsession with the Chernobyl disaster and safety bleeds into her attempts to control aspects of her personal and professional life. The yearning and tense feelings Jess feels as she handles her relationships-- with her childhood friends, cold mother, sibling, husband, coworkers, and daughter-- were beautiful and at times heartbreaking.

[Pat Lightbown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read. Her point of view is sometimes familiar and sometimes way out

[Charlene Carr]

In SOME THERE ARE FEARLESS, Becca Babcock explores the fear, tension, and complex emotions of motherhood, as well as the joy. With tender subtlety, she digs deep into the terror of loving, while wanting to protect the ones we love, the guilt and grief of our own powerlessness, and the ways in which childhood scars stifle our best intentions as we desperately try not to recreate the past.

Thank you to Vagrant Press for the opportunity to read an advanced copy.

[Digitally Lit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review by Emily:
A 4/5 star review of this @nimbuspub book! 🌟🌟🌟🌟

“Some There Are Fearless” is a wonderful read that touches on a very special yet far away interest of mine while still managing to connect itself back to the lovely province of Nova Scotia.

The main character Jessica is a child when the Chernobyl disaster happens, yet it shapes the rest of her life. Visiting the Chernobyl site as a young adult makes it even worse, forever not leaving her mind. Moving away from her childhood in Alberta to her life as a nuclear engineer in Halifax, Jessica is constantly trying to do the “safe” thing and control all aspects of her life, as well as her families, in the name of safety, though many know how hard it is to navigate control with the chaos of life.

This book was surprisingly relatable in a few different aspects. Wanting to have control over so much yet realizing how little you really have is one of them, as well as how much damage you can do trying to maintain that control. I’ve always struggled with the unpredictability of life, and the fact that her daughter in this story, like myself at one point, got mysteriously ill with no way to handle it in sight, makes this book quite easy to understand.

Another thing that kept me intrigued with this book is the relationship between Jessica and her mother. I found the relationship quite relatable, as it was a constant battle between “I don’t want to become my mother” and “I am becoming my mother.” Jessica seemed to have her mother in the back of her head quite frequently in the book, and she was constantly comparing herself to her.

This was a great read, and I learned a lot more about engineering than originally expected which was interesting. Also, the fact that there was so many little bits and blurbs throughout this book about Chernobyl reminded me of why I picked this book in the first place, as the disaster has held a special place in my mind now for many years.

This was a good 4/5 star read that I would definitely read again, and thank you again to @digitally_lit for giving me this book as an Our Stories Matter Youth Ambassador.