Atomic Hearts
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“A nuclear blast to the emotional core . . . Part teenage summer fling, part family tragedy, Megan Cummins’s debut is the most exquisitely written, bighearted journey into friendship, addiction, and the frustrations that come with parenting our parents.”—Nick Fuller Googins, author of The Great Transition
I’d been raised on secrets, I knew they weren’t a good idea.
Sixteen and living in a small Michigan town, Gertie is harboring a secret heavy enough to fracture her closest friendship. She and Cindy have been bonded since birth by the fact their fathers are addicts, and their unsteady home lives are a little easier when they’re together, sprawled on a trampoline with pilfered vodka and dreams of moving to New York.
Everything was changing so fast. I didn’t know what was real.
After an accident involving a bonfire and an aerosol canister sends Gertie to the hospital, she finds herself with nowhere to go but to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to live with her newly sober father. She sees it as a chance to escape the hometown drama she’s caused, but drama finds her all the same: parties without curfews, boys without boundaries, a compromising photo, tragedy back home . . . and her father, once again teetering on the edge of oblivion. Terrified of the consequences of being honest with Cindy, her sole refuge is the fantasy novel she’s writing, a portal to another world and the story of a young girl roaming a strange land, trusting her wits to survive.
I had to become a different, stronger person before I’d even figured out who I was in the first place.
Years later, when ghosts of the past surface, Gertie decides to write again about that explosive summer from the stabler shores of adulthood. Powered by the fierce imagination of her youth, Gertie finally allows herself the grace to tell a version of her narrative that she always hoped would be true.
Written with the feel and power of a ticking time bomb, Atomic Hearts is an unforgettable story of the ways we can be saved by friendship, love, and imagination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cummins's impressive debut novel (after the collection If the Body Allows It) follows two lifelong friends who bonded while struggling with their torn-apart families. Gertie and Cindy, both 31, grew up in Michigan, where they both carried the secret of their fathers' opioid addictions. As Cummins reveals in flashbacks, 16-year-old Gertie also keeps a secret from Cindy: that she slept with Cindy's boyfriend at a party. Gertie's plan to confess to Cindy later that year is cut short when Gertie causes an accident with a bonfire. As punishment, Gertie's mom makes her spend the summer with her newly rehabilitated father in Sioux Falls. When she discovers her father is still using, she escapes from the pain by writing a fantasy book. In chapters set during the present day, Gertie attempts to write a novel about that summer, and when Cindy suggests Gertie use her apartment as a retreat while she's away, Gertie's time there adds another dimension to her already intriguing reflections on the past ("People tend to choose: I became who I am despite the past or because of it, which aggravates me since it is so clearly both"). This works equally well as a gritty coming-of-age drama and an insightful story about the nature of writing.
