Kristen Iversen opens with a scene in her family car in 1963. She is a five-year-old child, and her parents drive her and her younger sister Karin home after touring the nearby Colorado mountains. Shocked, her parents stop the car, seeing their house burning in a fire. Iversen’s mother takes her to her neighbor’s house. Iversen blames herself for leaving a lamp on, but years later, her father says the fire started with one her parents’ lit cigarettes.

Iversen and her family move out of their house and return after its repair. Her parents drink cocktails after dinner but do not speak about alcohol. Her mother has a baby she names Karma. Iversen and her sister Karin play with neighborhood friends at the 19th century cemetery in neighboring Arvada. They can see Arvada down the hill, as well as the secret Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in the distance. 

The plant specializes in the manufacture of “plutonium ‘triggers’ for nuclear bombs” (3). These incredibly powerful triggers are expensive to produce and result in radioactive waste that contaminates the environment throughout the plant’s decades-long activity.