SHADOW ON THE HEARTH

Science fiction going domestic -- like as how what happens when bombs-away (atomic) hit a normal household? There is Gladys, waiting for her husband to make his way back to Westchester, N.Y., trying to keep her older daughter, Barbie, in place, waiting for news of her son. Tom (via radio found to be in the Army), and trying to keep her youngest, Ginny, from knowing too much of what is going on. Her other problems include a suspected maid, an acquaintance, drunk but radioactively poisoned, a high school teacher, also poisoned, also suspect, but a present help, in all the terrifying, unfamiliar crises that arise. How she brings her household through threats of evacuation, of tightly organized governmental controls, of possible sickness to her two daughters, of fear for her husband, of a neighbor's too close scrutiny add up to a woman's page special in a new field. Better -- at least not verse than you think.