Perhaps only a lifetime environmental advocate could write a passionate 20th-century historical novel, packed with Hanford's nuclear fallout suspense and wrapped in a love story. Author Kay Smith-Blum's debut, TANGLES, spans two timelines and two star-crossed narrators in the dark shadow of radiation contamination, during the race for the atomic bomb.
The losses mount up over two decades in TANGLES. In 1944, when a US government plutonium processing plant on the Columbia River releases emissions, the fallout sickens its secretive Area employees, and causes obscene rates of infant mortality, leukemia, thyroid disease, and cancer deaths among residents of the surrounding farmlands. The consequences are uneasily noted by Mary, whose dreams of a science career were thwarted by marrying the Hanford Area spokesman. As Mary transcribes classified technical test results for the Army’s secret Project, her suspicions mount. She finds more in common with her young neighbor, Luke, the son of a sickened Hanford employee, than she shares with her unsympathetic husband.Â
In 1963, the radioactive hazards continue to contaminate all who drink from the waters and breathe the air in the Columbia River basin, but the Hanford plant continues its nuclear mission under the Atomic Energy Commission. Its poisonous past must be kept secret at all costs. When the plant’s fallout claims a dead fin whale, following the death of his father, Luke's hunt for revenge is on—and Mary's mysterious disappearance is uppermost in his mind.Â
The tension rises quickly in TANGLES, as Mary and Luke discover their forbidden attraction and the daunting dangers they face by exposing World War II and Cold War duplicity. Kay Smith-Blum’s thrilling tale of loss and love untangles the lesser-known tragedy of Hanford, long overshadowed by the success of Los Alamos, and fiercely rights long-buried wrongs. If only the deadly buried legacy did not remain today.
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