THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019 // 19
BOOKMONGER
Novel offers surreal look at our nuclear history
On the Hanford Reservation in eastern
Washington during World War II, Plant B
was the location of the top-secret Manhat-
tan Project. It produced the plutonium used
in the world’s first nuclear detonation in
New Mexico and then in the atomic bomb,
dropped on Nagasaki, that ended World
War II.
The Manhattan Project represented a
remarkable feat of engineering accom-
plished in a short period of time. But have
we ever really come to grips with its shock-
ing culmination — a weapon of mass
destruction that wiped out scores of thou-
sands of lives in a single bomb drop?
Spokane author Sharma Shields consid-
ers this in her new novel, “The Cassandra.”
You’ll recall that in Greek mythology,
Cassandra had been given the gift of fore-
sight by Apollo, but when she spurned
the god’s advances, he also bestowed a
curse upon her: No one would believe her
prophecies.
In Shields’ new novel, young Mildred
Groves of Omak has always been sensi-
tive. As she tells it: “I had been born here
but my birth was a presumption. My home
was in a region that my grandparents and
great-grandparents had misshaped and bul-
lied, that my parents and peers continued to
bludgeon and disrespect. When I walked, I
began to hear the very earth groan beneath
my feet.”
In fact, some might say Mildred is trou-
bled. She has heard voices in her head for a
long time.
But Mildred is also the star pupil at
Omak Secretarial. So in 1944, when recruit-
ers come to town to hire folks for the mas-
sive government project being built down at
Hanford, Mildred applies.
She already knows she’ll be hired. The
voices in her head have told her so, and
they have never been wrong.
Because of her excellent skills, Mildred
is assigned to a physicist overseeing the
work at Plant B. Although she is not privy
to the purpose of the project, strict confi-
dentiality is required, and she works hard to
comply.
At first, Mildred enjoys being part of
something important, even if she is just a
cog in the wheel.
Her waking hours are occupied not only
by work, but also with navigating a patri-
archal industry and society — and the base
Henry Holt
Author Sharma Shields.
THIS WEEK’S BOOK
The Cassandra
By Sharma Shields
Henry Holt
304 pp
$27
Henry Holt
Cover of ‘The Cassandra’ by Sharma Shields.
intentions of some of her mostly male
colleagues.
Shields recreates the wartime vibe spot
on, with pungent details and vocabulary.
But increasingly over the course of the
story, the author spins an entirely different
world, too.
The voices and visions inside of Mil-
dred’s head assume a more strident tone.
At night she sometimes sleepwalks out of
the women’s barracks and into the desert,
driven by violent nightmares that she knows
to be prophetic.
Can she do anything to forestall the
onrushing doom? Will anybody listen if she
speaks? And if they don’t, what recourse
does she have?
“The Cassandra” is a consideration
of those who promoted humanity’s most
destructive impulses against its own kind.
It is a surreal portrait of the impotency of
those who tried to speak truth to power.
This is a powerful and deeply disturbing
story.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd
McMichael, who writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, authors and publish-
ers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at
bkmonger@nwlink.com