Nuclear Family

Nuclear Family is a collection of poetry that explores the impact of nuclear testing, the Cold War, and the legacy of violence on a girl's childhood. The poems are rooted in memory and history, and convey the sense of impending nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped the poet's childhood.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 104 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2022
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

In the depths of the night, her whitened toes / cold sole on his calf / between his palms, he warms / a slender foot – / twig bones, taut skin.

Jean Van Loons father held a position as a metallurgist in an Ottawa lab that actively contributed to the Manhattan Project. The Geiger counter he brought home, unwittingly exposed her mother's dinner plate to the radioactive remnants of nuclear experimentation. Her childhood friends' father, in turn, sold cobalt bombs to the Soviet Union, a secret known only to the family. Unbeknownst even to them, her mother worked for Canadas Cold War intelligence service.

Nuclear Family, deeply rooted in memory and history, takes the reader on a journey into the impending specter of nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped Van Loons childhood. The poems come alive with vivid imagery, resonant sound, and tactile texture, capturing the innocence of childhood games, the far-reaching consequences of prolonged nuclear testing, and the enduring legacy of her father's suicide—a fallout of radioactive silences.

In Nuclear Family, violent events, both global and familial, permeate a girl's coming-of-age tale, culminating in a story of cataclysm and, ultimately, recovery.

Dimension: 191 x 127 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780228011156