It’s fitting that April 22, Earth Day, is the release date for SALT OF PATRIOTS, the new novel by Covington author Donna D. Vitucci.
SALT is a fictional portrayal of uranium processing during the nuclear industry’s early days, and it settles on the community of Fernald, Ohio, to illustrate the days and dreams of families there during the 1950s.
If even the government’s unsure of the dangers then how’s a regular guy to reckon it?
More than 15 years in the writing, SALT OF PATRIOTS is not an expose, its characters are no whistleblowers. The novel serves up optimism and fear among working class families whose breadwinners hold dependable jobs in the face of atomic risk.
There is love and there is loss.
It is a story of a place, an industry, and most of all an innocent trust in superiors, and in the world, which no longer exists.
The Feed Materials Production Center (FMPC) was tightly run by the US government’s Atomic Energy Commission (today’s Department of Energy). Guided by its strict mission, the FMPC could not help but affect the land and the lives of families who relied on the dependable employment despite the shadowy industry in their midst.
Donna Vitucci
The novel’s characters are loosely based on those who worked at the FMPC, and re-imagined from hundreds of interviews conducted as part of lawsuit remediation activities upon the plant’s closure in the 1980’s.
Vitucci grew up in northwest Hamilton County. She and her family well knew Fernald and its surrounding countryside. She has been writing and publishing since 1990.
Her first novel, AT BOBBY TRIVETTE’S GRAVE, five-star-rated at Amazon, was released in 2016. SALT OF PATRIOTS has its genesis in family stories of her uncles, who worked at the atomic plant in Fernald in its early years.
Today, Vitucci lives in an historic home in Covington.
