![House Made of Dawn [50th Anniversary Ed]: A Novel (P.S.)](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/713F5drWgFL._AC_UL140_SR140,140_.jpg)
I consider myself an historian and, as such, I keep wondering whether this book is a work of fiction or whether the subject was a real live woman who disappeared in 1961. It does appear that the real "Uranium King" of the time was one called Charles Steen from Texas, who was actually a married man with four sons and a wife on the cusp of the East Texas oil fields. As I learned: "In 1952 Charles Augustus Steen, an unemployed oil geologist from Texas, effectively proved there was significant uranium ore on the Colorado Plateau. Settling his wife and four young sons in a tarpaper shack near Cisco, he took off alone to seek the precious mineral. Unable to afford a geiger counter, he took a broken down drill rig into the back-country, ignored standard uranium-seeking technology, and used oil exploration geology to locate the Mi Vida mine in the Shinarump conglomerate of an area the AEC had deemed barren of ore. What had been ridiculed as "Steen's Folly" resulted in the nation's first big uranium strike in the Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab." [...]
So clearly the town of Radium, Utah, where character Chinle was born, was actually Moab, the center of the U.S. uranium industry, and Charlie Dundee was based on Charlie Steen. [...] "Most uranium prospectors used a Geiger counter to detect radiation. Steen could not afford such an instrument and instead used a secondhand diamond drill rig to supplement his geologic training in his search. Eschewing standard uranium-hunting methods, he had an original theory that uranium would collect in anticlinal structures in the same manner as did oil. Others on the Colorado Plateau joked about 'Steen's Folly.' When Steen's son Mark was born, his family joined him in a small house trailer at Dove Creek, Colorado, later moving to a tarpaper shack near Cisco, Utah. Finally, on 6 July 1952, after two years of tramping the desert and feeding his family poached venison and cereal, Steen hit pay dirt in the Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab. His Mi Vida mine was the first big strike of the uranium boom and proved that there was a generous supply of uranium on the Colorado Plateau....Stories of Steen, the "Uranium King," are legion. In Moab he built a $250,000 hilltop mansion with swimming pool, a greenhouse, and servants' quarters. He formed Utex Exploration Company, Moab Drilling Company, Mi Vida Company, Big Indian Mines, Inc., and (later) the Uranium Reduction Company, and invited the entire population of Moab to annual parties in the local airport hangar. He had the work boots he had worn prospecting bronzed and flew to Salt Lake City in his private plane for weekly rhumba lessons. He also donated $50,000 toward a new Moab hospital and contributed land for schools and churches. In 1958 Steen was elected to the Utah State Senate. But disillusioned by high taxes and the defeat of his attempts to introduce legislation for Utahns to purchase liquor by the drink, he resigned from office in 1961 and moved to a ranch south of Reno, Nevada. There he built a 27,000-square-foot mansion next to the fabled palace of the Comstock millionaire miner, Sandy Bowers. Steen and his partners sold Utex and the Uranium Reduction Company to Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation in 1962."
The way the book is written, based as it is on historical fact, adds to the theme representing to me the corruption often elicited by the possibly good intentions of the government in protecting "national security" at the cost of the environment and our cultural heritage.
OR
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