This is a book about secrets: family secrets and government secrets. An incredible memoir and expose about growing up next to America's most important nuclear facility of the Cold War era.

"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 "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' "As [Iversen] and her primary school classmates were being taught to duck and cover pathetically when the Soviets finally struck, they were all along coming under silent attack from their own government. Against a bracingly realised backdrop of the rural American mountain west, Iversen recounts a superficially untroubled childhood of horse-riding, jumping in lakes and kissing boys. Yet it is turned chilling by our steadily mounting knowledge, and her happy ignorance at the time, of what was going on just a few miles upwind without the consent of those being polluted" -- Jon Swain Literary Review "An intriguing mix of memoir and first-class investigative journalism, a sort of Mad Men meets Erin Brockovich" Independent "Superb... her prose combines perceptive lyricism with stark brutality" New Scientist

Kristen Iversen teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis, where she lives with her two sons.