In a rural Ohio uranium processing plant during the optimistic, buttoned-up 1950s, employees pledge to keep their work secret - even from their own families - as Cold War fervor wanes in the face of what they're doing and at what cost. But these guys are no whistleblowers. Happy being the highest-paid chemical operators in the state, they dream of a better life for their children, along with their friends and co-workers, and proceed with optimism and fear, full of yearning emblematic of families in the 1950s and the rising middle class. These "Cold Warriors" work dependable jobs in the face of atomic risk, emboldened by pride leavened with fear.
This story of family, of expectations and disappointments, pledges and pain, love and dreams and desire, remembers a place, an industry, and most of all an innocent trust in superiors, and in the world, which no longer exists.
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Stunning images in Donna D. Vitucci's compelling novel Salt of Patriots will haunt you--a flock of starlings falls dead while flying through toxic smoke, a drinking hose shoots foul liquid at a child's feet, a man climbs a silo to be closer to the sky. For the families employed at this historical and ominous 1950's atomic plant, we worry every inch of the way, and not just because of the dangerous work, but because Vitucci has created men, women and children who we care about intensely. We root for them in life and love, and we are heartbroken when they can't, and won't, shy from their duties.
---Ann Joslin Williams, author of Down From Cascom Mountain and The Woman in the Woods.
Donna Vitucci writes with great authenticity and knowledge about a fascinating time and place in U.S. history that readers will find compelling and relevant. Vitucci's prose is delicate and exquisitely detailed. She weaves a captivating, original, and sweeping tale of love, truth, and politics.
---Janice Eidus, author of The Last Jewish Virgin and The War of the Rosens.
