Tilton, Nevada is not your average little community. Though the Cold War is over, the Atomic Diner still features Fallout Burgers. Underground explosions still shatter the night. Years of testing have poisoned the ground-and some of Jon Chase’s neighbors. As he and his wife, Peg, try to protect their young children, Jon, an idealistic arts commissioner, faces his own inner struggles. Timely and compassionate, this novel-based on real events-asks important questions: What do people do when changing national priorities eliminate their life’s work? What new values will the country embrace, and who will decide?

“Here is a storyteller! I read all day, then hated to finish this book because I had come to love these characters. A tender humanity runs from beginning to end. This is a loving and careful book.”
—Elizabeth Cox

“What Falls Away, for all its urgency about terrifying public issues, is finally a novel about many kinds of love: familial, sexual, communal, and social. The story manages to be heartbreaking and heart-assuaging simultaneously. Tracy Daugherty is an enormously talented writer.”
—Rosellen Brown