| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Department of Biochemistry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506
(ldavis{at}ksu.edu)
Teri Hein, Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin, 215 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10003. 2003. 249 p. $13.00 paperback. ISBN 0618302417.
Memoirs as a genre have always been suspect. Recently the reputation of one of Oprah Winfrey's chosen was shattered into a million little pieces, and we all recognize that politician's memoirs are closer to wish-dreams than reality. Still, the memoir has its place as a form of literature. Every witness sees things from a unique perspective and the memoirist is no exception. If the memoirist's vision is fascinating and his or her perceptions resonate with our own, we may learn from them.
Teri Hein grew up downwind of Hanford, in eastern Washington, thirty miles from Spokane. Her family, like those around her, farmed the Palouse, once a prairie like the Dakotas, with comparable low rainfalls. Her own neighborhood appears on millions of computers these days, as a lush green wheat field with just a hint of mountains in the background. Much of the story is about life on the prairie, but a clear subtext is anger at being a downwinder under the cloud of Hanford. The author is no shrill activist, but has suffered painful losses in consequence of the naïveté and nonchalance, or perhaps worse, amongst atomic workers of her childhood. The author, who deals with the consequences of cancer every day as a teacher of children receiving cancer treatment, perhaps has adjusted to her anger, or maybe fears being overwhelmed by it.
The organization of this book is more episodic than chronological. The lay of the land, some history of settlement and displacement of the native peoples, the life cycle of a farm, all provide a setting for her family's stories. There are a number of carefully crafted descriptions of members of the small, tightly knit community, sometimes abruptly interspersed with descriptions of their tragic injury or demise. Community events and their meaning at the time fill quite a few pages. Sometimes the detailed descriptions complete with names and places read too much like a local church or county history. One of the best episodes may be a description of a school classroom civil defense drill—they really did "duck and cover" despite the small size of the desks. We will never know for sure whether everything happened exactly as described here, or for the reasons assumed, but it is likely. And for most of the book we can state with the certainty of her transplanted North Dakotan Grandpa (and pastor) Keller that this is most certainly true.
Whether this book seems interesting, as well as true, will depend on the reader. Teri Hein has put a human face on the statistics for thyroid cancer and malfunction, brain tumors, and immune disorders that seem excessively prevalent among the downwinders. The total population of the area is too small, and the original data too obscure, to ever make a causal connection between radioactive releases from Hanford and illnesses downwind.
Although this book was first published in 2000, and then reissued with an epilogue in 2003, it has received very few reviews, other than on Amazon.com where opinions vary wildly. As one reviewer for the Texas Observer suggested, this was "growing up as collateral damage." If you want to know in detail what went on at Hanford, look elsewhere. If you want the fabulations of Lake Wobegon, you will have to read it in the original. But if you ever wondered what life was like in a real prairie town amongst the German Lutherans and their neighbors living in the shadow of the atomic age, you may appreciate this book.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
