The atrocities were playing in real time; it was not cinema: the Rape of Nanking, Auschwitz. In the young consciousness of Norman and Jean, an existential threat — pulverized from the East and the West. The generation drawn into the vortex of the ultimate war — fifty million dead, and counting. The people they knew were dying. Before the war: craftsmen, ministers, merchants, sailors, men and women of faith, peacemakers, judges — now, suddenly, scientists. The unspoken pride of having won, the riptides of guilt at producing the most destructive weapon of war. A pall within the four walls of the house — the Kingwood House, every other house in America, whether they knew it or not — far different than the paper walls of Hiroshima. The sunshine of life had been seeded by the Enola Gay. I was there to feel the aftershock. Born into the nuclear family: a family that stuck together, riding the crest of the atomic wave that promised unbridled liberation and devolved into the Cold War. A forced coming of age under threat. The American dream ruptured before it even started.