The Nuclear Age Summary
Tim O'Brien

The Nuclear Age Overview

Tim O'Brien's novel The Nuclear Age spans from 1958 to 1995 in the life of a perpetually anxious, politically conscious man from Montana named William. In 1995, William is a married middle-aged man and father of a 12-year-old daughter he spends his time obsessively digging a nuclear fallout bunker in his backyard. As William's wife and daughter get ready to leave him, due to his increasingly erratic state, he recalls his decades-long career of political subversiveness with a small group of Vietnam-draft-dodging friends he had met in college in the sixties. The novel tackles the themes of war, sanity, and unrequited love.