Tangles: A Cold War Love Story and Mystery
by Kay Smith-Blum
February 4-7
“In a well-crafted debut, Smith-Blum provides the reader a ringside seat to the birth of the nuclear age…a beautifully written, important story…Tangles packs a punch and hits close to home.” –Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Tracy Crosswhite Series
Oppenheimer was just the beginning.
When a harpooned whale offers proof the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is endangering all life in the Columbia River Basin, Luke Hinson, a brash young scientist, seizes the chance to avenge his father’s death but a thyroid cancer diagnosis derails Luke’s research. Between treatments, he dives back in, making enemies at every turn. On an overnight trek, Luke discovers evidence that Mary, his former neighbor, embarked on the same treacherous trail, and her disappearance, a decade prior, may be tied to Hanford’s harmful practices mired in government-mandated secrecy.
A love story wrapped in a mystery, this stunning Cold War home-front tale reveals the devastating costs of the birth of the nuclear age, and celebrates the quiet courage of wronged women, the fierce determination of fatherless sons, and the limitless power of the individual.
Tangles is a genre-defying must-read for our time.
Universal link for the book on Amazon
About the Author
Kay Smith-Blum, a former fashionista and Seattle School Board President, is a fan of mid-20th-century history albeit debunking its tropes as she writes. An odd dream and the recent upheaval over leaking radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear site compelled her to write, TANGLES, named 2024 Book of the Year by the Literary Global Book Awards and Best Debut Fiction by the American Writing Awards 2024. Smith-Blum, a sunrise writer, has lived in Seattle for four decades. She works out her writer’s block in her sons’ gardens and the nearest lap pool.
