Print edition: 
Nearly 30 years ago, before perestroika and glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lawrence, Kansas, was overrun by refugees from a nuclear blast. Allen Fieldhouse turned into a trauma center, neighbors turned against neighbors, death and destruction overtook the population, and what was left of society broke down. At least it all did on TV.
The TV movie "The Day After," which aired in 1983, was set and filmed in Lawrence. It was a daring movie, pretty heavy for TV at the time, and it was intended to be an unflinching look at what the aftermath of a nuclear attack could look like.
It's against the backdrop of this movie that Steven Church sets his memoir, " The Day After 'The Day After': My Atomic Angst" (Soft Skull Press, 218 pages, $14.95 paper), a touching, insightful look at growing up in Kansas during the waning days of the Cold War, and the lasting influence that childhood events can carry. o
"My generation is really the first generation to have television memories that are not mostly tinged with nostalgic, warm, and fuzzy undertones," Church notes. "We're perhaps the first generation to be raised by the TV as a substitute entertainer and authority, a major familial and cultural institution in our lives —with all the complicated dynamics that entails."
Church details his childhood with pieces of history and culture — Quantrill's Raiders to the Incredible Hulk — aptly dropped in. Though he doesn't come across as a "troubled child," it's obvious that the label would have been applied to him at the time, coming from a home broken by divorce, perhaps a little too preoccupied with war and violence. But he artfully captures how kids can latch onto an idea and blow it all out of proportion in their minds, and how that idea can shape, though not necessarily scar, someone, and even make that person better down the line.
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Wichita author BD Tharp has several appearances planned around town to mark the release of her new book, "Feisty Family Values" (Gale/Five Star, 269 pages, $25.95) .
The novel, set in Riverside, follow the stories of three women "of a certain age": fashionable Regina lives in her well-maintained Victorian home with her no-nonsense housemate Tillie, uneventfully until Regina's poor cousin Annabelle shows up, homeless and rather the worse for wear. Regina and Annabelle have never really gotten along; mix in cancer, abuse, budding romance, a stray kitten and three young children, and there's plenty going on.
If you go
BD Tharp book-signings
What: Appearances by Wichita author BD Tharp, who wrote "Feisty Family Values"
When and where:
* 7 p.m. Thursday, Watermark Books, 4701 E. Douglas
* 2-5 p.m. Saturday, Barnes & Noble, Bradley Fair
* 1-3 p.m. April 3, Borders, NewMarket Square
How much: Free
