Then Came the Summer Snow
An Atomic Age Hero's Journey
Then Came the Summer Snow is an encouraging historical novel about a determined mother who takes on a weapons company for its cancer-causing contaminants, which plague her uninformed community.
A 1950s homemaker leads the fight to protect children from harmful radiation poisoning in Trisha T. Pritkin’s historical novel Then Came the Summer Snow.
In 1958, in a Washington state town known as Atomic City because its largest employer is a top-secret atomic weapons complex, Edith is married to Herb, a company engineer. They have a ten-year-old son, Herbie. One day, as Herbie moves his father’s Geiger counter past the milk at the breakfast table, eerie clicking is heard. Thus begins Edith’s quest to discover the source of the radiated milk and enlist the help of other mothers to “make our milk safe” again. When signs of cancer appear in Herbie, Edith and Herb’s marriage is tested; with help from a dogged Associated Press reporter, she determines to hold the weapons company accountable for the health of people living in the fallout zone of its radiation pollution.
A mélange of fact and fiction, the novel relates the impacts of the facility’s radiation on the local animals, people, and environment through the eyes of an imagined cast representing the real local community. Edith and her group fight to confront the Atomic Energy Commission; her sleuthing skills and quest for answers about what else could be polluting them are illuminating. With her grassroots creation of MOMS (Make Our Milk Safe), Edith becomes a problem for those in power; even the FBI gets involved, trying to leverage Herb against her public crusade.
However, the novel’s characterizations are too light; people are ultimately stand-ins for their causes. Further, Herb’s actions increasingly strain credulity as the novel continues. At first, he worries more about keeping his job than he does about keeping his family together and safe. Later, when Herbie shows signs of thyroid cancer, Herb, though sick with worry, nonetheless accedes to his sinister employer’s demands to stop Edith from talking to the press.
Narrated in the moment and with the flavor of reportage, the story is at first quite urgent. However, some of its scenes have a jarring, slapstick quality, despite the seriousness of the central events. Further, a subplot devoted to a mistaken case of marital infidelity proves distracting, and some of the central plot points are belabored. Tension fizzles out as the book approaches its conclusion, with more questions remaining than there are answers provided.
In the eye-opening historical novel Then Came the Summer Snow, a woman fights to keep her community safe from a company engaged in clandestine nuclear production.
Reviewed by
Peggy Kurkowski
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