Welcome to Shirley

"Kelly McMasters grew up loving her blue-collar hometown of Shirley. A service-town to the glittering Hamptons on the east end of Long Island, the place, though hardscrabble, was full of strong, hard-working families and an abundance of natural beauty. Comforted by the rhythms of small-town life, Kelly and her neighbors were lulled into a sense of safety. But while they were going to work and school, setting off fireworks at Fourth of July barbecues, or jumping through sprinklers in summertime, a deadly combination of working class shame and the environmental catastrophe of a nearby leaking nuclear laboratory began to boil over." "This toxic helix reared its head again and again in the 1980s and 90s, as Kelly and her family watched neighbors become ill and die, the nuclear laboratory was proclaimed a Superfund site, and, in a bizarre attempt to construct an entirely new identity, Shirley tried to change its own name. But there would be no tabula rasa for this town." "Once imagined as a Town of Flowers by its hopeful founder, Kelly charts Shirley's tragic slide deeper and deeper into neglect. But even as its natural beauty disintegrates in the face of indifference and disease, the town's most precious resource - its people - may yet be salvaged. Welcome to Shirley is the story of one young woman's ability to find beauty in the most unlikely places, and one small American town's fight for survival."--Jacket.