Lines of Flight

Julie Salverson

"Julie Salverson grew up listening to the secrets of others. As an adult she works to help people tell their own difficult and painful histories by turning them into plays and performances, but eventually the trauma of these stories overwhelms her. Buckling under the weight of her work and on the verge of losing faith in anything, Salverson discovers a connection between Canada's north and the atomic bombs that fell on Japan, which becomes the start of a ten-year journey. In Lines of Flight, she traces that radioactive trail from a small village outside Toronto to Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories and onto Hiroshima. This is a cultural study of growing up in the nuclear age, a nuclear poetics. Written with energy and hope, Lines of Flight is a unique guidebook for life in the twenty-first century: how do we hold onto hope and find meaning in this terribly beautiful world?"--