The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Though the story takes place in the '80s, it feels eerily timely."—Bustle
Arkansas, 1984: The town of Griffin Flat is known for almost nothing other than its nuclear missile silos. MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—is a fear every local lives with and tries to ignore. Unfortunately that’s impossible now that film moguls have picked Griffin Flat as the location for a new nuclear holocaust movie, aptly titled The Eve of Destruction.
When sixteen-year-old Laura Ratliff wins a walk-on role (with a plus-one!) thanks to a radio call-in contest, she is more relieved than excited. Mingling with Hollywood stars on the set of a phony nuclear war is a perfect distraction from being the only child in her real nuclear family—which has also been annihilated. Her parents are divorced, and her mother has recently remarried. Her father, an officer in the Strategic Air Command, is absent . . . except when he phones at odd hours to hint at an impending catastrophe. But isn’t that his job?
Laura’s only real friend is her new stepbrother, Terrence. She picks him as her plus-one for the film shoot, enraging her fair-weather friends. But their anger is nothing compared to what happens on set after the scripted nuclear explosion. Because nobody seems to know if a real nuclear bomb has detonated or not.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1984, the only interesting thing about Griffin Flat, Ark., is that it's surrounded by nuclear missile silos. But when it's picked as the filming location for the adaptation of Boudreaux Beauchamp's novella "Eve of Destruction," everyone is excited even Laura Ratliff. Laura, 16, is still reeling from her parents' divorce due to her mother's scandalous affair with (and subsequent marriage to) Dennis Jennings, the only African-American man in town. Obsessed with the possibility of a nuclear war, Laura wins a radio call-in contest for a walk-on role in the film, but things quickly escalate for everyone when what is supposed to be a scripted nuclear explosion may or may not have been the real thing. Brashear (No Saints in Kansas) sprinkles the novel with information about the '80s, offering a nuanced sense of the time and what it felt like to grow up under nuclear threat. Footnotes for popular culture references, such as Columbia House ("It's a mail order music club") give the well-paced novel some levity while providing important background information. In this moment where what constitutes fact is up for debate, Brashear's seemingly nostalgic romp is extremely timely. Ages 14 up.)
