Atomic Summer Kindle Edition

Atomic Summer (Kindle Edition)
By Elaine D Walsh

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Product Details

Amazon Sales Rank: #236032 in eBooks
Published on: 2012-06-15
Released on: 2012-06-15
Format: Kindle eBook
Number of items: 1

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Nimitz Highway and River Street is an intersection on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. This is where she impatiently came out of the womb ready to start on her personal history. She grew up in upstate New York against the backdrop of the flowering women’s rights movement with different ideas from her mother as to what her life as a woman should be. In college, she majored in psychology with the intent of being a “death & dying” counselor. This would be her paying job while she wrote the next great American novel. Plan B kicked in and she graduated with a B.A. in English, packed her car, and upset her parents by moving to Florida in search of her destiny. Without ever having taken one business course, she created her own brand and became a successful business executive by day and women’s fiction writer by night. So far, she has lived a Lifetime Movie Network life, a mixture of extraordinary, ordinary, mundane, and terrifying, providing her great inspiration and fanning her creative flame. Her father imbued in her a strong sense of family. He brought to life the words unconditional love. From her mother, she gained an appreciation for the complexities of relationships and richness in life one finds exploring and experiencing everything from a recipe, to a historical site, to lunch with friends, or a glass of wine. Her mother was a collector of experiences. They journeyed together and grew as inpiduals and as mother-daughter. Elaine shared her mother’s journeys battling cancer, as her mother survived one and succumbed to another. In one of their last soulful conversations before her mother died, she told Elaine she was glad Elaine also had a daughter and hoped she would enjoy her own daughter as much as her mother enjoyed Elaine. The most powerful influences in her life and her stories come from being a daughter, mother, friend, and soul mate. But as a successful women’s fiction writer, does this surprise anyone?

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Great summer read
By Dana Hughes
This book is a fun summer read. It's one of those stories that you can sit by the pool or on the beach or anywhere you can curl up for a few hours and escape for some R&R reading enjoyment. The first lines intrigued me and from there I kept turning the pages to see what came next and I was not disappointed.
The story opens in 1973 with a brief flashback from Faith, who is one of the main characters. She is traveling back to her hometown for a reunion where she will be reunited with her girlhood friends in the small town in upstate New York where she grew up. Something happened that summer that changed her life and the lives of her friends. The way the writer sets up the opening scene made me want to find out. In other words, I was hooked! I didn't have to give it a few chapters to see if I was interested in turning the pages.
The story immediately jumps to 1953. Bernadette, who is Faith's best friend, is holding court in her family's bomb shelter. It is 1953 for goodness sakes and the communist "red scare" is in full flight, so what a perfect place for teenagers to hang out, cool off, grow up and grow bored. Bernadette is obsessed with boys. They aren't quite as enamored with her and who can blame them. She is a narcissist you just want to reach in to the pages and slap. I love it when a character drums up emotion in me, both good and bad. Well, Bernadette doesn't hide her interest for Faith's boyfriend which sets up a nice conflict between these supposed best friends. But Faith is too naïve and too good of a friend to do what I would have done which is punch Bernadette right in the kisser. Then there's the ugly duckling third wheel friend Octavia who you find yourself rooting for as she struggles to step out of the dark shadows of her troubled family.
Besides the story's main characters Faith, Bernadette and Octavia (which BTW, the point of view shifts between Faith and Octavia which makes for interesting story telling), there is the over the top, self proclaimed southern belle matriarch of Bernadette's family, giving the reader insight as to why Bernadette is the overbearing girl she is. And wait until you meet the mysterious Reverend Flews. Add two teenage boys to this stew of a story to spice it. There's a lot to taste as you slurp from the author's spoon and find yourself trying to figure out all of the ingredients that go into this coming of age story.
The author's tag line is "THREE friends, TWO secrets, ONE lie, and the summer that changed their lives". The author leaves breadcrumbs to follow one secret while she slowly reveals another and the euphoric and heart wrenching impact of each one. And the lie that becomes blatantly clear early on what it is and who is telling it and the entire community gets sucked in to it. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive". It is deliciously tangled and the next best seller in my eyes.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Don't miss Atomic Summer!
By Jill Brooks
Atomic Summer follows several adolescents and adults through their unforgettable summer of 1953, in the small upstate New York town of Port Pompeii. The author has perfectly molded them into remarkable characters, and people we could relate to, whether we lived through the 1950s or not.
Having been a child in the 50s, I found the book to be very true to the period, from the threat of Communism, bomb shelters, air raid drills, and teens obsessed with their virginity as well as burgeoning sexuality. The desire to be normal, though no one knew what that was, was always out of reach. The 50s was a very conservative time, with judgement and pain in the wings at any given time.
The way author Elaine Walsh sets up the main characters, Faith, Octavia and Bernadette, and her mother, the insufferable Savannah, you know them early on, although this doesn't make them predictable. Savannah single-handedly brought back memories of how mothers can embarrass us, and each of the girls had recognizable qualities and faults.
The young men in the book are full of surprises, but Stephen, who returns to Port Pompeii from the Korean War offers the most poignant dialog, and is wise beyond his years. Then there's Rev. Pappy who offers mystery and color and a surprising background. Friends Wesley and Allen are central characters as well and they certainly reminded me of boys I knew, and showed sense of fun and angst.
Each character is illustrated in a way that draws the reader to feel that he/she knows them personally. When things happened, I felt that they were happening to people I knew, and I went through a range of emotions as well.
Drawn in, I finished the book in two days, and it was one of those stories that I didn't want to end. I'm hoping that Ms. Walsh will treat us to more of her talent, because after reading Atomic Summer, I plan on reading anything she writes! I haven't felt this way about an author since Anne Tyler and Joyce Carol Oates.

Jill Brooks

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Rites of Passage, Fifties Style
By Matie Tomkins
What woman today cannot relate to the Fifties? Either our mothers or grandmothers passed through that era, with its post-WWII political and cultural rebirth (and of course the most classic fashion statements in modern history!). Elaine D. Walsh has captured the essence of budding female adulthood with the concerns of the times in this terrific summer read. Two thumbs up for Atomic Summer!

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