DAYTON, Ore. — Yamhill County author Shannon St. Hilaire is releasing her third book, The Hanford Necklace, a dual-timeline historical novel connected to the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington, on Oct. 6.
The trade paperback is published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster, according to the publisher’s listing. The listing shows a list price of $18.99, a length of 376 pages, and an eBook edition.
St. Hilaire said the novel alternates between two storylines. One follows a grandmother from 1945 through 1974, and the other follows her granddaughter in 2013. St. Hilaire said both characters are fictional. She said she interviewed a former Hanford worker while researching the book, but the grandmother is a composite of several people’s experiences. The publisher’s description identifies the characters as Rosamond and Saige.
St. Hilaire, who grew up in the Tri-Cities area of Washington, said the idea for the book began with her mother’s thyroidectomy, when she learned the resulting scar is referred to in the region as the Hanford necklace. She said she had the idea for the book in 2019, began researching it in 2022, and started writing in 2023.
The Hanford Site was built in the 1940s to produce plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology. Nine reactors were built there during World War II and the Cold War, including B Reactor, which began operating in September 1944.
The department describes the site as one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world and said cleanup has continued for more than 35 years. About 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste are stored in 177 underground tanks on the site, according to the department. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said some of the contaminants leaked into the land and water, including the Columbia River.
She said she did not learn about Hanford’s contamination until a college class, and that the subject was not discussed in the Tri-Cities when she was growing up.
“I noticed that there’s this sort of blindness in Hanford that I myself had,” St. Hilaire said.
That perspective, she said, shaped the book.
“It’s a sort of loud secret or some sort of cognitive dissonance that happens with the people living in this town,” St. Hilaire said.
St. Hilaire said she sees potential readers among historical fiction fans, book clubs, and people interested in environmental and health issues. She said her two earlier books, released in 2024, were set in El Salvador and Nazi Germany, and that The Hanford Necklace is the most personal of the three.
“It made the work so much easier because it felt like the story had been latent in me for years and had just been waiting to come out,” St. Hilaire said.
St. Hilaire moved to Yamhill County in November 2025 after about 12 years in Portland. She works in corporate communications. She said she is co-writing a memoir with a woman who is an activist in the Syrian revolution and is finishing a sequel to her previous novel.
Copies of The Hanford Necklace will be available at Chapters Books and Coffee in Newberg and Third Street Books in McMinnville, according to St. Hilaire. The book is also available online through retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
Learn more at Simon & Schuster’s website.
