A Long Day's Journey... 
 On the opening page of this novel, dated January 3, 1961, a soldier named Paul Collier sees an ambulance racing through the night towards the army facility outside Idaho Falls where he himself works as an operator on a small experimental nuclear reactor. This much is not fiction. The army did run small reactors in the Cold War to power missile silos and other remote defense installations. And the Idaho Falls explosion remains fortunately the only nuclear accident in the US to cause immediate death. By structuring a work of fiction around this true event, debut author Andria Williams at least guarantees herself a stunning finale for her novel. And indeed, when we return to the night of January 3, 1961, on page 304, the story crackles along with blistering pace, living up to all you might expect of it. 
 My problem was with the three hundred pages that came in between. I personally have little tolerance for humdrum domestic Americana, or for stories of marriages that seem to be going steadily from bad to worse. But to her credit, Williams does much to prevent this becoming humdrum. Almost any time we see Paul at work, we are acutely aware of the poor security precautions at the project. And Williams' picture of the social conventions of the Eisenhower era is chillingly convincing. The dinner party in an early chapter given by Jeannie Richards, the wife of the Master Sergeant who is Paul's boss, is a masterpiece. We shrivel as she graciously excuses the gaucheness of Paul's wife Nat, who mistakenly brings a meat loaf to a dinner that is already complete down to the place-cards. Jeannie will remain in the picture as a busybody nemesis throughout--a bit of a cliche, but a nice contrast to Nat, who is the true protagonist. 
 For Nat, though a loving wife and mother, and an entirely sympathetic person, is also naive. She doesn't realize that the elaborate social rules she tends to despise are also there for her protection. So when Paul is deployed to Greenland for six months and she burns out the transmission on the family car, she is unaware that her growing dependence on the helpful young mechanic is laying her open to gossip, the flames assiduously fanned by Jeannie Richards and the like. And indeed I too had trouble believing in her naivete; it is hard for an author to write about such a conventional period without descending into convention herself. Nat at least inched towards a third dimension, but none of the other characters got as far as two. Williams might have sustained this at half the length, but 300 pages waiting for the climax is just too much. However, she does show much skill in bringing everyone together in that nuclear conflagration at the end.