Nuclear Option is Dorothy Van Soest’s fourth novel and from page one, I knew I was in good hands. The work explores the tension between passion and restraint in crisp, resonant prose. Its characters are flawed, compassionate, and deeply engaging. The plot delivers suspense, humor, and a fair amount of rage even as it inspires readers to join nuclear activists in making the world safe from nuclear arms. This is as much a story about a social issue as it is an action thriller. It’s constructed on a solid base of fact.

The story is told by Sylvia who, in her younger years, carried on a hard-drinking romance with Norton Cramer. Speaking of flawed, Norton was married at the time a fact that triggers waves of guilt in Sylvia. During his time in the military, Norton served as a human guinea pig, standing exposed in 1956, for the nuclear test conducted on Enewetak Atoll, a ring of land surrounding a coral reef in the Marshall Islands. The US did conduct at least 100 nuclear tests on and near these Pacific islands, and the results were devastating to the people who lived there. And to Norton’s family.  He and Sylvia shared a deep commitment to activism and to each other until Norton died (mysteriously).

This novel, the third in Dorothy's Sylvia series, opens when Norton’s son Corey surfaces in Sylvia’s life in a flurry of grief and rage at his own son’s cancer diagnosis. The two form a complicated allegiance that enables Van Soest to introduce another theme: how far are you willing to go to battle injustice? These two characters disagree and Sylvia's approach to her relationship with Corey is both clever and deeply loving.

My favorite scene: when Sylvia arrives in exactly the wrong outfit and decides to tough it out. Dorothy’s favorite: the courtroom scene; because it’s based on the transcript of her own trial.

Do visit Dorothy’s website: https://www.dorothyvansoest.com/ and pre-order your own copy of Nuclear Option.

Author Interview

Dorothy’s someone you’ll want to know better. Here’s an interview she and I did. Spoiler alert: people die in Nuclear Option and we talk about it in the last couple of questions.

Amanda: I’m interested in your relationship with Sylvia. You and she do seem to have a lot in common – social justice activism, keen sense of humor. How do you get along? What’s she like to live with?

Dorothy: Your question goes to the heart of my approach to character development. It’s true that Sylvia Jensen and I have a lot in common. In fact, all her stories originated from my own experiences as a social worker, educator and activist. But, as fictional characters are wont to do, she evolved into her own person and became this outrageous, dysfunctional and unstoppable breaker of rules in the cause of justice that I can only imagine being. Sylvia’s adventures are like kaleidoscopic, shattered bits of my life experiences and her feelings remain close to mine. Quite simply, I have fallen in love with her.

Amanda: Your nuclear thriller draws from a deep well of knowledge about the issue. No doubt it was informed by your 40 years of experience with WAMM. Tell me a little bit about the experiences that helped shape this novel.

Dorothy: I grew up during the Cold War when the fear of nuclear holocaust terrorized us regularly with the Duck and Cover drills in school. During the Cuban missile crisis, when I was in college in Chicago, I walked around campus for several days, looking up, waiting for the Big One to explode in the sky at any minute. That kind of fear led me to join the nuclear disarmament movement in the 1980s, joining Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) at its inception, creating an empowerment group and helping to start others, going to the Women’s Peace Camp in Seneca Falls, NY. I was arrested at the Honeywell Corporation and went on trial several times. My anti-nuclear activism defined me in ways that leave me feeling marginalized and alienated today now that the Cold War is behind us and we’ve stopped talking about nuclear war. It almost seems as though nuclear weapons are these fictional creations relegated to the past as cultural metaphors. But the truth is the danger of nuclear annihilation is greater now than it has ever been. If the world ends today, or tomorrow, it will be due to a nuclear war whether started by intention, or by accident, as nearly happened countless times during the second half of the 20th century. And instead of attempting to minimize that risk, our leaders both in Washington and abroad seem to be actively courting it. Feeling increasingly alone with my fear and increasingly alarmed about the imminent danger, I think it was inevitable for me to focus on nuclearism in my latest novel. 

Amanda: Tell me about your writing practice.

Dorothy: It’s like going to the grocery store. Every morning I look forward to it. I do my morning rituals (breakfast and a walk) then I go at it for 3-4 hours straight. Writing and plotting. Sometimes it’s not easy but the process is so fulfilling. I even enjoy editing; making it better. Discipline is not required. Then I have a writing group of three who have been together for years. I read it to them and then go back and revise. When things are going well I get ideas in the middle of the night. For me writing is like eating and breathing. I do take vacations from it, but life doesn’t feel right without writing.

Amanda: I’m intrigued by your inclusion of further resources at the end of the book. What do you hope your readers will take away? What do you hope they’ll do?

Dorothy: On January 23, 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight—which is closer to an apocalyptic end of civilization than ever before, whether it would be started by design, blunder, cyber-enabled misinformation, or simple miscommunication.  My biggest hope is that Nuclear Option will contribute in some small way to waking us up from sleepwalking our way through the current nuclear landscape that has been made increasingly unstable by the steady dismantling of the arms control boundaries that helped prevent nuclear catastrophe for the last half century. There’s a trial scene in Nuclear Option in which atomic veteran Cramer acknowledges to the jury that, while it’s common knowledge that we wouldn’t survive a nuclear war, few people know that we aren’t surviving the preparations for nuclear war either. That’s what I want readers to come away with: an increased knowledge about the impact on the more than 400,000 atomic veterans like Norton who were used as guinea pigs in our country’s secret nuclear bomb testing program, the ongoing spread of deadly radiation across the globe, and the very real and increased threat of nuclear annihilation we face today. Just as in the same trial scene when Norton Cramer asks the jury to be the conscience of the community, my hope is that readers will use that information to take action and come away with a new or renewed commitment to resist the production of nuclear weapons.

Amanda:  Your villain, Vince is very interesting. And mysterious. Can we expect to see him in the next Sylvia Jenson novel?

Dorothy: Yes, Vince is still a mystery to me. His body was never found so I don’t know if he’s dead or not. Sylvia, of course, is convinced that he is because she saw him fall to a sniper shot with her own eyes. I suspect he was doing a job for the FBI or CIA, some undercover job to aimed at creating fear, division and violence in the country. Hmmmm, sound familiar? I don’t expect that Sylvia or anyone else will see him again but it’s an interesting idea to think about. 

Amanda: Why did Freddie have to die?

Dorothy: I didn’t mean for him to die. Then I got to a point in the story where someone had to and I felt bad about it. But I wanted to show how strong the commitment of the group was to nonviolence, that they weren’t a bunch of crazies or “terrorists” but ordinary people who were willing to go to any lengths to change things.

Next Month: Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert (A memoir by Eria Elliott, MD)