Bobbie Ann Mason

About the author: Bobbie Ann Mason is a novelist and short-story writer who was raised in western Kentucky.

From its founding in 1952, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant was a good neighbor to its employees and to the surrounding community of Paducah, a small city in the traditionally agrarian region of western Kentucky. But the radioactive isotopes created while the plant produced enriched uranium for weapons as well as peaceful energy production have brought about illness and death among workers, most of whom saw themselves as taking part in an important and patriotic enterprise. Attitudes among many local workers haven't changed, even as the news broke in the national media that Paducah has been suffering through one of the longest and worst toxic waste-related health crises in the...