Kristen Iversen is the author and narrator of this nonfiction text. She grows up in Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver located near the Rocky Flats nuclear plant. The oldest of four children, she navigates a childhood in which happiness and dysfunction coexist: Although she enjoys her siblings and many pets, her father’s alcoholism creates relational and financial trouble in the family. The watchful Iversen remains ever aware of this tension, although the family’s culture of silence trains her never to speak about it. As a young woman, Iversen finds freedom and independence through horseback riding, reading, writing, work, and college life.

As a young adult, Iversen denies that Rocky Flats poses any danger to the public and, like her father, dismisses those who protest. Her later work at the plant shifts her view, and she quits her job as a typist amidst anger and fear that the plant officials have knowingly contaminated her community. After graduating with her Ph.D., Iversen begins teaching and decides to write a book. Iversen tells her sister Karma, “I want to write about the two things that have frightened me most in life,’ [...] ‘Rocky Flats, and Dad’s alcoholism” (283). Although resistant to protesting earlier in life, Iversen takes up the mantle of protesting Rocky Flats, as well as facing her fears, through writing Full Body Burden.