Dear Great Book Guru, I was at the Sea Cliff Village Swearing-In ceremony last Monday. What a turnout! People say it takes a village to raise a child- well , it looks like it takes scores of people (almost all volunteers) to run this village. It was great fun and the refreshments were spectacular, but I overheard someone talking about what seemed like a very strange book- something about radioactive revenge. Have you heard of it? Citizen Observer

Dear Citizen, Yes, that was quite an event. Sea Cliff is filled with citizen-volunteers who find their niches in so many different areas. The characters in REVENGE OF THE RADIOACTIVE LADY by Elizabeth Stuckey-French too are seeking to find useful roles in society, but the past weighs heavily upon them . The lady in the novel's title is seventy-seven year-old Marylou Ahern, who in 1953 while pregnant, was given an experimental radioactive "cocktail" supposedly to ensure the health of her child. Actually it was to test whether radioactive substances were harmful to fetuses. Dr. Wilson Spriggs, her obstetrician, was the mastermind of this experiment. Marylou suffered from its aftereffects for decades but her most grievous suffering was the loss of her young daughter to leukemia, a direct result of ingesting this cocktail. Now after years of plotting and planning, she is about to get her revenge, but she is confronted with a wizened old man suffering from dementia, and his family- children and grandchildren, too- are struggling with a myriad of problems: physical and spiritual. What is left for Marylou to do? Her attempts to find peace make for a poignant and, yes, adventure-filled tale .