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| About the Book |
Book Title: Then Came the Summer Snow
Author Name: Trisha T. Pritikin
Publication Date: September 15th, 2025
Publisher: Moonshine Cove Press
Pages: 328
Genre: Historical Fiction / Dark Humor / Atomic Feminism
Any Triggers: misogynist culture of 1950s; no violence, but cancers in children are a focus, and thyroid cancer treatment.
In 1958, Edith Higgenbothum, a housewife in Richland, Washington, downwind of the massive Hanford nuclear weapons production site, discovers that the milk her young son Herbie drinks contains radioactive iodine from Hanford's secret fallout releases. Radioactive iodine can damage the thyroid, especially in children.
When Herbie is diagnosed with aggressive thyroid cancer, Edith allies with mothers of children with thyroid cancer and leukemia in communities blanketed by fallout from Nevada Test Site A-bomb tests on a true atomic age hero's journey to save the children.
Praise for Then Came the Summer Snow:
“In Trisha Pritikin’s crisp and sweeping novel, the Cold War comes home to live with a family in Richland, Washington. Not the Cold War of ideologies, but the one that included 2,000+ nuclear tests, and the production of hundreds of tons of plutonium; that contaminated our homes, food and communities; that actually took family members.”
~ Robert “Bo” Jacobs, Emeritus Professor of History at the Hiroshima Peace Institute and Hiroshima City University, author of Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale 2022).
“Then Came the Summer Snow is like an unexpected gift in its surprise and freshness. Absurdity informs its realism, its poignancy, and its humor. A troubling, hilarious, weird, and wonderful novel.”
~ Mark Spencer, author of An Untimely Frost
Buy Link:
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Author Bio:
Trisha is an internationally known advocate for fallout-exposed populations downwind of nuclear weapons production and testing sites. She is an attorney and former occupational therapist.
Trisha was born and raised in Richland, the government-owned atomic town closest to the Hanford nuclear weapons production facility in southeastern Washington State. Hanford manufactured the plutonium used in the Trinity Test, the world’s first test of an atomic bomb, detonated July 16,1945 at Alamogordo, NM, and for Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that decimated Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Beginning in late 1944, and for more than forty years thereafter, Hanford operators secretly released millions of curies of radioactive byproducts into the air and to the waters of the Columbia River, exposing civilians downwind and downriver. Hanford’s airborne radiation spread across eastern Washington, northern Oregon, Idaho, Western Montana, and entered British Columbia.
Trisha suffers from significant thyroid damage, hypoparathyroidism, and other disabling health issues caused by exposure to Hanford’s fallout in utero and during childhood. Infants and children are especially susceptible to the damaging effects of radiation exposure.
Trisha’s first book, The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice, published in 2020 by the University Press of Kansas, has won multiple awards, including San Francisco Book Festival, 1st place (history); Nautilus Silver award (journalism and investigative reporting); American Book Fest Book Awards Finalist (US History); Eric Hoffer Awards, Shortlist Grand Prize Finalist; and Chanticleer International Book Awards, 1st Place, (longform journalism). The Hanford Plaintiffs was released in Japanese in 2023 by Akashi Shoten Publishing House, Tokyo.
Author Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trishapritikinfightingback/
Amazon Author Page:
Goodreads:
Atomic Heritage Foundation Interview:
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| read an excerpt |
Excerpt #3:
Setting the Scene: After Herb’s
Geiger counter detects radiation in local milk, the family uses reconstituted
milk as a substitute. Herbie doesn’t
like the reconstituted milk. When Herbie
asks why he has to drink it, Herb insists that the only problem with the milk
is that it tastes funny, all the while knowing it is radioactive. He’s planning
to ask his boss whether the presence of radioactivity in local milk poses a
health hazard for his son, but the very thought of such a meeting makes him
highly uncomfortable.
At
breakfast, Herbie reluctantly spoons Cheerios into his mouth, grimacing at the
taste of the reconstituted milk. He much prefers Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks to
boring Cheerios, but you can’t get an atomic sub with Sugar Smacks! Herbie picks up the Cheerios box and yanks on
the inner waxed paper bag of cereal, attempting to free it from the cardboard
box.
“What
in heaven’s name are you doing?!” Edith
asks, staring.
“I’ve
gotta cut ‘The Oat Cereal Ready to Eat’ out of two Cheerios boxes, so I
can get an atomic sub! See?” Herbie
says, pointing to the front of the box—BOYS: Get Your Atomic Submarine! 12” Long. Actually Shoots Torpedoes.
“You
already have all those atomic subs you got from Corn Flakes boxes!”
“Those
don’t shoot torpedoes, Mom!”
Last
year, Herbie had given up his beloved Sugar Smacks in favor of Corn Flakes, and
for a very good reason. In 1957, for the first time, Kellogg’s enclosed prizes
in some of its cereals. Corn Flakes boxes included a miniature baking-soda
powered replica of the U.S.S. Nautilus, the world’s first atomic sub,
launched in 1954. With just a pinch of baking soda, the submarine moved in
water, surfaced, and dived. Herbie had collected all six colors. This year,
he’s ready for something bigger and better.
Herb
pours himself a bowl of Cheerios. He carefully slices two-thirds of a banana
onto his cereal, tossing the remaining third into a bowl containing the week’s
collection of brown, spotted banana thirds. Edith once asked Herb why he didn’t
eat the whole banana. He just shrugged. Herb always eats two-thirds whether the
banana is big or small. To preserve domestic harmony, Edith no longer brings it
up. She and Herbie don’t like bananas, or they’d eat the leftovers. Once a
week, she tosses out the week’s rotted remainders.
“Dad,
I don’t like this weird milk—it’s watery and kind of sweet. Why can’t we have
the milk we always have?”
Pouring
the reconstituted milk onto his Cheerios, Herb tries to think of a reasonable
response. “Well, son, our regular milk tastes funny. We need to use this stuff for now.”
“Ok,
Dad, but it tastes yucky! What about at
school? I always get milk with lunch.”
Herb
hadn’t thought about that. “OK, Herbie, just one carton with lunch.”
Edith
stares at Herb, bewildered.
Follow the tour:
Twitter Handles: @TrishaPritikin @cathiedunn
Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub
Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #Downwinders #AtomicJustice #1950s #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub
Tour Schedule Page:
(Helen has not yet read this title)
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