Summary

Downwind is a fictional account of the Collins family. Living in St. George, Utah, during the testing of the atomic bomb, the Collins family finds itself victims to the undisclosed effects of nuclear testing.

Brady Collins, the eldest son, is assigned to work at a nearby military installation, where he meets Dr. Charity Fuller. Dr. Fuller has evidence that the government is covering up the real effects of nuclear fallout on the residents in the path of the nuclear clouds.

At first, Brady is reluctant to believe that our government would be involved in such duplicity, but when his uncle succumbs to cancer, attributable to radiation absorbed in the ground and passed to him ingestion of milk, Brady decides to investigate further. When his father is struck with the same cancerous condition, Brady, along with Dr. Fuller, set out to expose the cover-up.

Evaluation

Upon completing the book (a work of only a few hours, given the spare prose and the fairly simple plot), I wondered just what made this a Mormon novel. Of course, the St. George location, and the identity of the author as having also written The Eternal Promise (clearly an LDS books), helped to establish this idea.

But there were other subtle hints, dealing with values that some LDS hold dear. The Collins family is very close-knit; when Dr. Fuller is brought home to meet them, there is great effort made to establish the centrality of family in Brady's life.

Somewhat more obliquely, the government is presented as trustworthy (in the end, the cover-up is the work of one renegade General, and his cronies); the idea of a "secret combination" is prevalent throughout the book. The government ultimately comes to the rescue and saves the day. And the idea of nuclear testing is, in the end, validated -- they all oddly agree that testing needs to continue, but just not in the way it was being done.

Most important, the compelling need to tell the truth is demonstrated in the number of lives ruined by the lies of one General.

I expect this book is long out of print. Although not great literature, it was, to me, worth reading. I lived on the East Coast during these times, and was not directly affected by these tests. Downwind, with its vivid images of great blasts and lingering clouds, warnings to stay indoors, etc., gave me a little glimpse of what life must have been like during those times.

[Jeff Needle]
... nfx v3.1 jeff.needle@general.com