Then Came the Summer Snow
Trisha T Pritikin
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.
Please read an excerpt from The Came the Summer Snow:
Setting the Scene: Herb’s uranium-prospecting Geiger counter went off when Edith placed a glass of milk on the kitchen table next to her young son Herbie. Startled by the loud clicking, Herbie knocked the glass onto the floor. As the glass fell, the milk spilled, forming a Rorschach blot that reminded Edith of a mushroom cloud stretching toward the kitchen. Once the milk was on the floor, the Geiger counter no longer registered radioactivity nearby. Edith is puzzled why the Geiger counter found something radioactive in her house.
After she’s finished the dishes, Edith settles in on the sofa, gazing out the front window. The outline of the two-story ‘A’ house across the street is barely visible in the twilight. Edith slips into deep thought, pondering the optimal ingredients for a proper gravy for the pork chops and mashed potatoes for tomorrow’s supper.
That evening’s episode of The Mickey Mouse Club is followed by an ad for Dorothy Gray Salon cold cream. “If you’re looking for a cold cream that’s powerful enough to remove radiation, look no further!” A scan with a Geiger counter confirms that Dorothy Gray cream has indeed removed all of the radioactive dirt applied to a worried model’s face.
Herb mixes himself a martini: 3 oz vodka and .5 oz dry vermouth, stirred vigorously and long in an iced martini pitcher. With the addition of a dash of orange bitters and a pimento-stuffed olive, it achieves perfection. Edith requests one of Herb’s famous Pink Squirrels: ¾ oz crème de noyaux, ¾ oz white crème de cacao, and 1½ oz heavy cream, mixed in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, strained into a martini glass and garnished with a maraschino cherry. Edith seldom involves herself with the family liquor cabinet, preferring Herb apply his advanced mixology skills on her behalf. In Edith’s view, preparation of alcoholic concoctions is and should remain a man’s realm.
Slurping his martini, Herb fidgets, waiting for the soothing effects of alcohol to kick in. This will be the first time he’ll have raised a health concern at work. He’s consistently endeavored to be a model employee, never complaining, never raising eyebrows. He worries that now he’ll be labeled a troublemaker. “They” might even assign an informant to follow him!
That evening, as Herb and Edith get ready for bed, Edith says, “I just don’t get why you think there’s a bacterial issue with the milk, Herb. I’ve seen the men in their lab coats around town testing the milk. I asked them once what they were testing for. They told me one of the things they test for is bacterial counts.”
Trisha Pritikin 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/
