Book Reading: Tangles by Kay Smith-Blum

Join A Book for All Seasons and NCW Libraries to welcome Seattle-based author, Kay Smith-Blum, to talk about her new book, Tangles.

Just released in December 2024, Kay Smith-Blum’s debut novel, Tangles is quickly earning widespread praise from both readers and critics. Tangles has been honored as the 2024 Best Fiction Book of the Year by the Literary Global Book Awards and named Best Debut Novel by the American Writing Awards. Smith-Blum’s tale also claimed a bronze medal for Best Adult Book from the Reader’s Choice Book Awards.

Based on classified files not released until the late 1980s, Tangles is the first adult historical suspense novel centered on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the Western hemisphere’s largest environmental disaster site. Hanford’s history of radioactive releases – some intentional and some not – has affected the health of a vast region and its human and animal populations since World War II.

Seattle resident Smith-Blum dedicated 10 months to researching and interviewing experts about the true costs of this government-mandated secrecy that spanned decades and incorporated her findings into a novel. She delivers a genre-defying, home-front story of a region cloaked in secrecy during the Cold War era of fear.

“Tangles is a brilliant, captivating ride through a very dark period in America’s nuclear history. Although fiction, Smith-Blum reveals many truths about our radioactive legacy,” praises Joshua Frank, Award-winning investigative journalist, NYT contributor, and author of Atomic Waste.

“In a well-crafted debut, Smith-Blum provides the reader a ringside seat to the birth of the nuclear age…a beautifully written, important story…Tangles packs a punch and hits close to home,” says Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Tracy Crosswhite Series.

Author Bio

An Austin, TX transplant and lifetime environmental advocate, Kay Smith-Blum has resided in Seattle for more than four decades. Since selling a family-owned high-end fashion business in 2016, history buff Smith-Blum spends her days creating stories set in the mid-20th century. The recent upheaval over leaking waste tanks at the Hanford site in Washington state compelled her to write a Hanford story in a way that would educate and entertain readers, resulting in her debut novel, Tangles. A companion short story to Tangles is featured in the 2024 anthology, Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women, which Smith-Blum co-edited. She has published a variety of other short works that can be found in multiple literary journals. Smith-Blum works out her writer’s block in her sons’ gardens and the nearest lap pool. To learn more, please visit KaySmith-Blum.com and follow the author on Instagram @discerningksb, TikTok @ksbwritesfiction and Facebook @kay.smithblum.

Schedule

6:30pm – Meet & Greet with the Author
7:00pm – Book Reading & Presentation Begins
7:45pm – Book Signing Begins
8:00pm – Event Closes