Fission Among the Fanatics is about growing up downwind of hydrogen bomb test sites (the sky turned black as midnight during lunchtime at Tom's kindergarten), and receiving writerly vocation among Mormon fundamentalists. In exile, Tom Bradley pursues this vocation among religious nuts of a different stripe, in the most famous nuclear test sites of all Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's a full-circle deal, with an extended stopover of several years in Red China. (Bradley--a.k.a ?The Bayonet?--was kicked out of China for political reasons which are detailed in the book.)
