Uncle Anton's Atomic Bomb

A "compelling . . . indelible" darkly comic epic of Cold War paranoia, CIA skullduggery and one American family (Dan Wakefield, national bestselling author).
 
"Here again with great verve and admirable nerve is the wily Ian Woollen with a wild and curious saga, told as Vonnegut might have." It begins in Spring, 1951, as two fresh college graduates renew a childhood acquaintance on a long train ride home to Indianapolis. One impromptu get-together that sets the stage for a tragicomic future of upper-crust romance, calamitous political intrigue, boarding school drama, sibling warfare, mushroom clouds, and family secrets (Ron Carlson, ward-winning author of Return to Oakpine).
 
She is Mary Grace Stark, about to embark on her first State Department posting in Moscow. He is Ward Wangert III, reluctantly returning to his family business, after turning down a job offer from a powerful friend at the CIA. A few months later, while supervising a bomb shelter project, news of a poisoned poodle, an unplanned pregnancy and a diplomatic debacle in Moscow, have Ward rescuing Mary from behind the Iron Curtain. The couple decides to wed. Over the next five decades, in the deteriorating rust-belt city of Indianapolis, they will live the American dream. Sort of.
 
"In the grand tradition of Hoosier authors Theodore Dreiser and Booth Tarkington" (Dan Wakefield), Uncle Anton's Atomic Bomb is "a grand generational novel--vivid, epiphanic, rich with secrets. . . . There is a gun too, high caliber, and it goes off. Boy, does it go off" (Michael Martone, author of Four for a Quarter).
 
"Read it twice." --PopMatters