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2023's Book of the Year, Southern Literary Review
2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Long List
A 2023 Great Group Read, Women’s National Book Association
"Powerful debut...McElroy writes with veracity about the effects of nuclear waste on the land and water, and brings to life the strange mix of terror and naivete of the era."—STARRED Review, Publishers Weekly
“Atomic Family is a wholly original, gripping, and stunningly crafted story of one family’s attempt to cope with the fears and uncertainty of the nuclear age. Ciera Horton McElroy captures the fragility of a young boy and his parents as they struggle with their own personal demons in the face of potential catastrophe. Atomic Family is as lyrical and assured as it is devastating.”—Diane Chamberlain, NYT bestselling author of The Last House on the Street
“Ciera Horton McElroy is a magician of prose and psychology. Atomic Family is a Mrs. Dalloway updated for the nuclear age, an intense excavation of memory, trauma, and hope. Her characters, so deeply felt, will whisper to you at night long after you finish the book.”—Brenda Peynado, The Rock Eaters
A South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow of a nuclear bomb plant.
It’s November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town.
Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewives—and his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets he’s uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fears—of the world and of each other.
Hardcover ISBN: 9781949467949
Paperback ISBN: 9781958888681
Also available as an eBook and audiobook
Ciera Horton McElroy is the author of Atomic Family, named a 2023 Great Group Read by the Women’s National Book Association and short-listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She lives in the Midwest, where she writes and runs a boutique film marketing agency.
