"Full Body Burden"

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (Kristen Iversen)

You can probably tell what the book is about from the title - Iversen packs both her own autobiography and a history of the Rocky Flats nuclear facility into this book. This technique could go disastrously awry as the two aren't exactly intricately intertwined (Iversen getting a temp job at Rocky Flats near the book's end is a blase anticlimax), but it mostly works. I say mostly because at times it can be annoying when Iversen is in a groove either detailing Rocky Flats or her own life and cuts away to pick up the other narrative. Now to be fair, complaining that you're enjoying the book so much that you're annoyed that you're not immediately getting more of it isn't really much of a negative, and Iversen is wise enough to omit what must have been boring material (the stretch of her life where she goes to Germany basically boils down to "I went to Germany and came back"). In fact, I guess my only caveat is that this is another depressing book, but I suppose nobody picks up something with a title like this looking for a breezy read.

Grade: A-