Fallout

In October 1962, the Soviets deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba, triggering a 13-day confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. This event came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis began when U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba, just 90 miles from American shores. President John F. Kennedy responded with a naval quarantine of Cuba and demanded the removal of the missiles. For nearly two weeks, the world waited anxiously as the two superpowers stood on the brink of nuclear war. Ultimately, through tense negotiations, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites in exchange for a U.S. pledge to remove its missiles from Turkey and to refrain from invading Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis is now widely regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came the closest to full-scale nuclear war.

Historically, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully. However, Fallout imagines an alternative history in which diplomacy fails and the nuclear exchange actually occurs, a scenario that would have devastated the United States. The novel captures an accurate sense of the pervasive anxiety and paranoia that characterized this historical era, and the author’s depictions of fallout shelter construction, school drills, and constant discussions about the possibility of attack are also true to life.