This book by Kristen Iversen was a challenge for me to review The book is mixture of the author’s autobiography and negative stories and rumors about the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon plant. Those familiar with this web site know I have a very positive opinion of what the people of Rocky Flats accomplished and won’t be surprised I have many disagreements with what is written in the book.

A review of “Full Body Burden” by Hank Lamport in the July 1, 2012 Denver Post contains a passage that explains the anti-Rocky Flats tone of the book. He writes about “…the profoundly shocking history of the Rocky Flats site that few bothered to inform themselves about even as it actively spewed and dripped a toxic compote of chemicals and elements into Denver’s environment over the course of more than 30 years.”

I’m using that statement to bend my commitment to write about a book without editorial comments. I’ll try to reserve those for the blog link. The full body of evidence developed by the State of Colorado and other governmental agencies found that the plant had a remarkable history of controlling the dangerous and toxic materials involved in the operations. The blog posting has a more complete description of at least a few disagreements with what is written in the book and links to references. I won’t say much more about the Rocky Flats half of the book here. The often sudden transitions from the autobiography to complaints about was or might have been going on at Rocky Flats was distracting from the parts of the book I found interesting.

I was interested in the descriptions of the author and her love of her many pets, although pets often didn’t last that long. The author describes her shyness and preference to be with her animals in general and her horses in particular. There is a much too brief reference to the author and her sister being in the horse riding organization called “Westernaires.” The daughter of some good friends became one of the “star riders” for Westernaire shows before she “graduated” to college. I would have enjoyed reading more about how far the two sisters advanced.

The book recounts the author’s lonely life during school years and the difficulty she had making friends because she preferred books and horses over people. She also had a difficult family life with a father who drank himself from being a successful lawyer to making a living driving a cab, a mother who maintained a state of denial with pills, and siblings who struggled to either deal with the parents or rebel against them. There is a particularly sad account of the young man who had proposed marriage to the author dying in a climbing accident fall. There are also several references to illnesses of family, friends, neighbors, and animals that are suggestive of growing up in a toxic environment.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the family drives to Golden Gate Canyon or Rocky Mountain National Park. There is one particularly memorable traumatic description of the family car hitting a deer on the return from Estes Park. There is another story of a wreck that injured the author while the father was probably too drunk to drive.

There are interesting descriptions of the neighborhoods, businesses, and landmarks around Rocky Flats, and Standley Lake has a central role in the lives of the author and other children growing up in the area. There are long periods of financial struggles for the author’s family when she was a youngster and into her adult life. Those descriptions made me wish for her book to be a financial success, although I’m disturbed at how many people will form their opinions from this one source. I suggest that you read my free book titled “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats,” or, as I suggest in the blog posting, Chapter 25 might make you less fearful. My book It is available for sale on Amazon in paperback or Kindle for those who prefer paying for books, although the cost is a bit less than “Full Body Burden.”

There is much more about a few of the many inaccuracies and misinterpretations in “Full Body Burden” in my blog posting where I also suggest reading my book for another point of view. Enjoy the human interest parts of the book and be at least skeptical about the rest.