Atomic Summer - Softcover

Walsh, Elaine D

3.77 out of 5 stars

137 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0985566302 ISBN 13: 9780985566302

Publisher: Barks Out Loud, 2012

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2012 Southern California Book Festival Honorable Mention, General Fiction

THREE friends, TWO secrets, ONE lie, and the summer that changed their lives. The world is ripe for destruction in 1953. The Korean War drags on and the Rosenbergs are executed as spies. Senator Joseph McCarthy convinces the country communists are infiltrating the government, and the threat of nuclear war festered in the collective consciousness of the nation. While the nation worries about communist bombs, sixteen-year-old Bernadette Vaughn holds court in the family bomb shelter, finagling a way to read Kinsey?s groundbreaking work on human sexuality. She obsesses about boys and big city life. Her best friend, Faith McNulty is a devout Catholic who dreams of staying in their small town, marrying Allen Hanlon, and raising a family. Their awkward and unattractive friend, Octavia Mansfield doesn?t have room in her life for boys, dreams, or God. She spends most of her young life caring for her severely disabled brother. Their conversations about what each of them would do if the end of the world were imminent become the catalyst for a prank that spins wildly beyond control and draws in an entire town. Left behind in the wake of that summer?s events are their unrealized dreams and open wounds. In 1973, a reunion trip to the small town of their youth returns them to the summer of 1953 and the passion and betrayal that changed their lives.

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About the Author

Nimitz Highway and River Street is an intersection on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. This is where she impatiently came out of the womb ready to start on her personal history. She grew up in upstate New York against the backdrop of the flowering women’s rights movement with different ideas from her mother as to what her life as a woman should be. In college, she majored in psychology with the intent of being a “death & dying” counselor. This would be her paying job while she wrote the next great American novel. Plan B kicked in and she graduated with a B.A. in English, packed her car, and upset her parents by moving to Florida in search of her destiny. Without ever having taken one business course, she created her own brand and became a successful business executive by day and women’s fiction writer by night. So far, she has lived a Lifetime Movie Network life, a mixture of extraordinary, ordinary, mundane, and terrifying, providing her great inspiration and fanning her creative flame. Her father imbued in her a strong sense of family. He brought to life the words unconditional love. From her mother, she gained an appreciation for the complexities of relationships and richness in life one finds exploring and experiencing everything from a recipe, to a historical site, to lunch with friends, or a glass of wine. Her mother was a collector of experiences. They journeyed together and grew as individuals and as mother-daughter. Elaine shared her mother’s journeys battling cancer, as her mother survived one and succumbed to another. In one of their last soulful conversations before her mother died, she told Elaine she was glad Elaine also had a daughter and hoped she would enjoy her own daughter as much as her mother enjoyed Elaine. The most powerful influences in her life and her stories come from being a daughter, mother, friend, and soul mate. But as a successful women’s fiction writer, does this surprise anyone?

Review

From Readers FavoriteHighly recommended for reading lists everywhere....Main characters Faith, Octavia, Bernadette, Bernadette's mother Savannah, Faith's Allen and his friend Wesley, and all other characters both major and minor are believable and totally of the times back then. Elaine Walsh has written a delightful and sometimes sad book that tells of a period in not so long ago history. She also writes of people's lives as they picked up from mistakes made and went on living as best as they were able to. -- Alice DiNizo

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