Atomic Family

2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Long List2023 Book of the Year, Southern Literary ReviewNamed a 2023 Great Group read, Womens National Book AssociationA South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow of a nuclear bomb plant.Its November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town.Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewivesand his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets hes uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fearsof the world and of each other.