The Last Night on Bikini
Dale Dyer New York: William Morrow and Conpay, Inc., 1995. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 171, [5] pages. Includes Acknowledgments; The Last Night on Bikini; 1952; Maybe a Wave; View from Kwaj; Light at the Equator; Swear; Angle of Incidence; Starting from E; and Between Territories. Told by Navy brat "Lucky," the story of a military family on an island base at the equator during Cold War nuclear testing exposes the realities at the edge of ground zero, the coverup, and the devastating aftermath. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: MacInnes's first novel crackles with character and humor, nimbly relating a troubled military family's offbeat stagger through the Cold War. The story, told by teenaged LeeAnn, spans several years in the 1950s, during the height of nuclear testing. The family has been posted to Kwajalein, one of the Marshall Islands, 175 miles from ground zero on Bikini Island and well within the physical and psychological reaches of the fallout. The finely rendered setting sparks several outstanding segments: LeeAnn's ornery father, Jack, diving drunk for relics from a German destroyer; her mother, Matty, sewing uniforms for pigs fated to roast for science in the glow of a mushroom cloud; father Jack and Joe Beebe, LeeAnn's lover, resolving an argument with a Geiger counter. In the end MacInnes [delivers] the well-wrought spell of her storytelling by handing the reader memory. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Kwajalein Island, Nuclear Weapons, Weapons Testing, Bikini Atoll, Military Famils, Military Base, Marshall Islands, Fallout, Animal Experimentation, Radiation, Geiger Counter
ISBN: 0688080014
[Book #84204]
Price: $37.50