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In the night her whitened toes / cold sole on his calf / between his palms he warms / a slender foot – / twig bones, taut skin.
Jean Van Loon’s father was a metallurgist in an Ottawa lab that contributed to the Manhattan Project. The Geiger counter he brought home exposed her mother’s dinner plate as radioactive. Her childhood friend’s father sold cobalt bombs to the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst even to the family, her mother worked for Canada’s Cold War intelligence service.
Rooted in memory and history, Nuclear Family carries the reader into the sense of impending nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped Van Loon’s childhood. Poems come alive with image, sound, and texture, portraying the innocence of childhood games, the worldwide effects of prolonged nuclear testing, and the long-lasting 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 in a story of cataclysm and, ultimately, recovery.
“The memoir is heartbreaking, the history sobering and the poetry that encases both—making the music and emotion of Nuclear Family come to life—is crafted with exquisite care.” Arc Poetry Magazine
“Relying on careful research and individual memory, Van Loon expertly weaves together the threads of household life with cultural moment… The seeming ease with which these poignant associations are made is jarring and disturbing but effective, forcing the reader to contemplate the everyday reproduction of atomic bombs and the subsequent lingering effects.” H-Net
“Jean Van Loon shapes a poem with scientific precision. This cohesive collection explores the half-life of familial love set against the unimagined consequences of our species’ nuclear achievements. Heart-rending and thought-provoking, Nuclear Family asks us all what we can learn from the wrong end of time.” Ottawa Book Award jury