Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Shadow of a Secret Nuclear Facility - Softcover

"A shocking and salutary coming-of-age memoir, Kristen Iversen has produced a meticulously researched and compelling narrative of growing up in the “sacrifice zone” of America’s nuclear weapons programme... Full Body Burden is one of those rare, life-changing works whose quiet, insistent moral authority commands us to read on and to remember" (Melanie McGrath Sunday Telegraph)

"An intriguing mix of memoir and first-class investigative journalism, a sort of Mad Men meets Erin Brockovich" (Lucy Scholes Independent)

"A serious and alarming book" (Dwight Garner New York Times)

"Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era. It’s an essential and unforgettable book that should be talked about in schools and book clubs, online and in the White House" (Rebecca Skloot, author of 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks')

"An enjoyable and powerful read" (Rosie Kinchen Sunday Times)

In the early 1950s, men from the government decide to build a secret nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats. Its job will be to refine plutonium and mould it into the triggers at the heart of every one of the country's nuclear weapons. Decades later, it will be branded 'the most contaminated site in America'.

A few miles down the road, Kristen Iversen is enjoying a carefree, outdoor childhood in a sublime setting of desert and mountains. She and her siblings jump streams, ride horses, live a happy outdoors life. But beneath this veneer the family is quietly falling apart. Her father drinks, her mother copes. And in a series of fires, accidents and other catastrophic leaks, Rocky Flats is spewing an invisible cocktail of the most dangerous substances on earth into this pristine landscape. The ground, the air and the water are all alive with radiation.

The years that follow will bring protests, investigations, denials, cover-ups, threats and lies. And then, one after another, people start to fall ill.

Full Body Burden is a brilliant work of investigative journalism and a searing memoir. It is a book about secrets: the small ones families hide from each other and the even more dangerous ones governments hide from us.