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 AN ATOMIC TOWN THAT WENT BOOM... April 30, 2008
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
The author writes lovingly of her early years growing up in the South Shore town of Shirley, Long Island in New York. Shirley, long considered to be the poor relation of the more affluent and prestigious Hamptons, began its existence with great optimism.
The town was founded by Walter Turnbull Shirley, a Brooklyn boy who fell in love with the ocean, wildlife, and trees that he saw in 1917, when he was at Camp Upton, an Army induction center in rural Long Island, in an area known as Yaphank. Years later, he would invest in real estate, buying up thousands of acres of land on Long Island's South Shore.
Developing the land in the 1950s, he built inexpensive bungalows that he marketed to blue collar workers as summer homes. Unfortunately, unlike Levittown, no formal plans were devised for its development, so the town grew in haphazard fashion with the problems associated with poor planning. It was also located in the shadow of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, located on the former site of Camp Upton.
When the author, as a little girl, moved to Shirley with her parents in 1981, it was idyllic time for her. She enjoyed the close knit feeling of small town life and recalls with great fondness memories of the life her family shared with their wonderful neighbors. Memories of block parties, barbeques, riding her bike with her friends, exploring the nature preserve that abutted her immediate neighborhood are all lovingly shared with the reader.
By then, however, Shirley was in a decline and had gone to seed. Moreover, the sleeping giant had begun to waken, and one by one many beloved people began dying of cancer. That sleeping giant was the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a nuclear facility that over the years had been carelessly leaking carcinogenic toxins into the ground water.
The author is at her best when writing about nostalgic memories of growing up in Shirley. She absolutely brings those memories to life for the reader. The sections of the book in which she discusses the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the cancer cluster that grew around it are well-researched but have a somewhat detached feel to them. It is almost as if the author had written two separate books and put them together, so different is the texture of the writing. Still, I found this to be a worthwhile read, overall, and those who like reading memoirs will find much to enjoy in this book.
 powerful mix of history, politics and life experience April 24, 2008
7 out of 19 found this review helpful
Welcome to Shirley is a compelling read. This book succeeds on many different levels simultaneously and I would highly recommend it. I especially admired the way that Kelly McMasters manages to blend astute powers of observation and attention-to-detail from her own life experience against a very well researched backdrop of politics and history. It is a format that worked really well for me as a reader--the pages kept turning because the story was personal and I cared about the people involved.
The book is both uplifting and disturbing....but ultimately for me Welcome to Shirley drives home a triumphant humanist message about family, friendship, resilience and the power of people sticking together through thick and thin. I basically read this book cover to cover in one sitting because the story was so engaging. I am going to go back and read it again more slowly in appreciation of Mcmasters' voice as an author--her clear and uncluttered style make this book a refreshingly well written piece of nonfiction.
 Inaccuracies abound... April 22, 2008
27 out of 42 found this review helpful
As someone who has been following the environmental cleanup at Brookhaven Lab for the past 15 years, I was very disappointed by this "memoir." McMasters' childhood memories and fears are vividly portrayed, but her claims of extensive research are contradicted by a plethora of factual errors, especially when she is writing about the lab.
McMasters also conveniently neglects to mention independent scientific studies that offer solid evidence contrary to her primary claim - that cancer clusters surround Brookhaven Lab. Instead, she uses supposition, partial truths, and innuendo to support her apparently predetermined conclusions. I guess this makes for a more tantalizing read (and may result in better book sales), but it certainly does not result in an accurate accounting.
The author doesn't even correctly name the "primary funding agency" for the lab (the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense, information readily available on their web site). How can the reader trust her more extraordinary claims - like a connection between Brookhaven Lab, UFOs and the TWA Flight 800 disaster? Or her reporting as fact that a terrible childhood cancer can "only" be caused by radiation when, in reality, a simple Google search reveals web sites like the American Cancer Society's, which cites five inherited medical conditions as risk factors, but not radiation? In fact, the ACS website says that there "are no environmental factors (such as exposures during the mother's pregnancy or in early childhood)" that are known to increase the chance of getting this cancer.
There are many similar misstatements throughout McMasters' book that she could have easily checked and corrected. This is surprising, especially in light of well-publicized factual problems with several recent titles in the memoir genre.
Newsday did a yearlong investigation of Brookhaven Lab in 1998. The multi-part series concluded that there was no public health crisis associated with the lab and dispelled many of the same claims McMasters makes. If her book were just a collection of memories, her conclusions might be understandable. McMasters, however, tells the reader that "Welcome to Shirley" is based on facts and extensive research and then cherry-picks information that fits her story.
Brookhaven Lab has certainly had some significant environmental troubles, and no one questions that Shirley has been impacted by the negative publicity. If the book had taken a more complete, honest look at the lab's relationship with Shirley and the surrounding community and how it has changed over the years, the book could have been an interesting read that brought people together. Instead, it's likely to scare Shirley residents and perpetuate the worst stereotypes about science, health, and government.
McMasters could have helped build her town up; instead, she tears it down. Is she using Shirley for her own gain? It sure looks that way.
a dazzling, beautiful memoir April 16, 2008
10 out of 24 found this review helpful
Kelly McMaster's Shirley is a small, run-down town in Long Island that once held a great deal of promise. Shirley's the child you want to keep saving, but can't because you find yourself suffocating in all the red tape. From a Brooklyn boy's grand dreams of a second Hamptons replete with golf courses and flower boxes to clusters of children suffering from rare forms of cancer to a litany of women who hold vigil for their friends whose boughts with cancer are a horrific right of passage. This is a powerful story about class issues, marginalization and it's also a very honest portrait of the affects of man's hand in the environment, and how the decisions we make based on survival today-what we put into the earth, what we put into our bodies-follow us into our families and our homes.
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