The Last Night on Bikini by Patricia MacInnes 1995 HC

From Booklist

During the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. military obliterated several of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean by using them as test sites for atomic and hydrogen bombs. In theory, the natives of the islands were safely relocated before the blasts, but in reality, it didn't always happen that way. This is the story of those tests as seen through the eyes of Lucky, a young woman whose navy father is working on the bombs. MacInnes skillfully blends the stories of the dispossessed and irradiated natives with the meltdown of Lucky's family: her father is an alcoholic who actually loves the bomb and all the potential it seems to hold; her mother tries to fill the emptiness in her life with obsessive cleanliness and overprotectiveness; her brother is an introspective intellectual who plasters their small island with Adlai Stevenson posters. Despite a jarring, almost superfluous last chapter that recounts the eventual deaths of members of Lucky's family, this is a well-crafted first novel that announces a writer of great promise. George Needham

Product Description

the story of a military family on an island base at the equator during Cold War testing exposes the realities at the edge of ground zero, the coverup, and the devastating aftermath. A first novel. 15,000 first printing.