God Went Like That
In the middle of the last century, a research and development complex in California’s Simi Valley experienced multiple near-catastrophic accidents, leaking radiation and other toxins into the surrounding communities. In the decades that followed, rates of cancer and other illnesses rose among the local population, most of whom never knew they were raising their families among nuclear waste. Yxta Maya Murray tells this story through the report of a federal agent, Reyna Rodriguez, assigned to interview residents of the valley and former workers of the laboratory. Rodriguez finds a collection of people with difficult and complicated lives, who interweave their tales of illness with those of loves found and lost, of friendships forged and broken, of both deep care and profound neglect. It makes for a riveting read, one where government malfeasance, environmental racism, and the complex and interdependent lives of people collide to make present a powerful and terrible truth: we are what we make of the world, and we are making an awful mess of it.