Book Title: Then Came the Summer Snow

Series: n/a

Author Name:  Trisha T. Pritikin

Publication Date: September 15^th, 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.

Twitter Handles: @TrishaPritikin @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #Downwinders #AtomicJustice #1950s #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/08/blog-tour-then-came-the-summer-snow-by-trisha-pritikin.html

Book Title and Author Name):

Then Came the Summer Snow

Trisha T Pritikin

Blurb:

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

Excerpt #1:

Herb clocks out of work at 5:00 PM on the dot, handing over the film badge and pencil dosimeter that read his daily on-site radiation exposure. Before he’s allowed to leave the reactor, he’s scanned with a handheld Geiger counter, checking for any wayward radioactive particles he might have picked up during the day. If anything’s found, a decontamination shower is the next order of business, followed by a repeat scan until he’s declared “clean.” Only then can he change into his “street” clothes and head home.

On the long bus ride back to Richland, Herb only half listens as the young secretary sitting next to him chatters on about her new life as a married woman. She’s ecstatic at the prospect of raising a family in a ‘safe, clean town like Richland.’  Does he have kids? she asks. “Yes, a son, Herbie.” More questions follow about Herbie’s age, his school, how Herb and Edith like Herbie’s teachers. Herb finally tunes her out, nodding his head and muttering “yah” and “I see.”

Back in town, Herb brushes crumbs off the dashboard and driver’s seat, then climbs into the DeSoto. He’s had the car now for nearly a year. He’s darn proud of it, the 1957 model right off the showroom floor. Featuring the new torsion-air ride, the DeSoto takes corners without lean or sway. The glossy full-color brochure with the photo of the car’s modern “Flight Sweep styling” reeled him right in: “Here is the new shape of motion— long, upswept tail fins, low silhouette (only 4 feet, 7 inches high), plenty of headroom, and 32% more windshield area!! This baby can flick its tail at anything on the road!” Piloting such a fine piece of modern machinery around town makes Herb feel positively regal, the master of his domain.

Herb suspects it was the elegant Frontier Homespun-style grain vinyl interior that convinced Edith to go along with the purchase— when he first brought up the idea of a new DeSoto, Edith insisted that their 1953 Buick Roadmaster still ran just fine. In the end, though, she went along as she always did. Herb bought a new Desoto, and she kept the Roadmaster as “her” car.  She would have preferred a new Dodge Le Femme over the Desoto. After all, the La Femme had that delightful upholstery covered with pink rosebuds on a silver-pink background with pale pink vinyl trim. Why, the 1955 La Femme even came with a keystone-shaped pink calfskin purse that matched the interior of the car, complete with coordinated accessories—a face powder compact, lipstick case, cigarette case, comb, cigarette lighter, and change purse, made with your choice of either faux-tortoiseshell plastic and gold-tone metal, or pink calfskin and gone-tone metal. But she knew Herb would never go for that. He wanted a Desoto, and that was that. The La Femme, after all, was a women’s car.”

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bOOqKE

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, 1^st 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, 1^st Place, (longform journalism). The Hanford Plaintiffs was released in Japanese in 2023 by Akashi Shoten Publishing House, Tokyo. 

Author Links:

Website: www.trishapritikin.com

Twitter / X: https://x.com/TrishaPritikin

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trishapritikinfightingback/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/triesq/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Trisha-T.-Pritikin/author/B086WVVNTY

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19583157.Trisha_T_Pritikin

Atomic Heritage Foundation Interview: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/trisha-pritikin/