'It deals with a serious subject, but I also laughed a lot.' This is why Anne-Gine Goemans wrote a cheerful book about nuclear weapons

An upbeat novel about nuclear weapons, it had to be Holy Trientje Becoming. Author Anne-Gine Goemans based the book on the true story of American nun Megan Rice, who - at an advanced age - managed to enter the United States' most heavily secured nuclear bomb complex with nothing more than a pair of concrete scissors. 'I thought it was so beautiful, brave and naive.'

Hiroshima 'failed'

Every four years, writer and journalist Anne-Gine Goemans delivers a new novel. Her previous ones, Honolulu King, a bestseller with 60,000 copies sold, was the starting point for her new book, Holy Trientje, in which nun Trientje plots a burglary of a Dutch depot containing atomic bombs to wake up the population. Goemans based the novel on the true story of the very elderly American nun Megan Rice, who managed to break into the heavily guarded Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, where all US atomic bombs are produced.

Her interest in nuclear weapons was already piqued when she was in Honolulu King wrote about the bombing of Hiroshima and discovered that that bombing had actually 'failed'. ''I never knew that, but less than 2 per cent of the bomb only went off. Eighty thousand were killed immediately, and a multiple of them contracted radiation sickness and mutations. Can you imagine what would have happened if the remaining 98 per cent had also exploded! I found that fact so intense. I wanted to write a book about nuclear weapons and their impact."

Not an easy subject in more ways than one.

'True, when I tell people that my new book is about nuclear weapons, I just see them thinking: what a nasty subject, that must be a terrible story. I really didn't want that, because there's usually a lot of levity in my novels, even if it's about a heavy subject.'

How did you stumble upon this elderly American nun's story?

'Four years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker about her; she had received a three-year prison sentence. All her life she had been demonstrating for world peace, but to no avail. By now she was well into her eighties and thought: I have to do something big before I die. All nuclear weapons out of the world: that was her commitment. Together with two elderly deeply religious gentlemen, she managed to enter the Y-12 complex in Tennessee, where tonnes of bomb-ready uranium is stored. That she might not make it out alive did not bother her. In 2011, using only God as their navigation, they headed into that complex, which is surrounded by security fences and alarm systems, at night. They cut through the first fence, and ... nothing happened.'

How does it exist?

'Indeed. They went through all the gates, and even all the way inside, the guards with their guns in the watchtower still did not see them. They staged a whole ritual with baby bottles full of human blood and barrier tapes. They sat there for four hours before a guard thought: I'm going to check anyway, because I think an alarm has gone off. He saw that they were not terrorists, as Megan and her helpers lit a candle, sang and gave the guard bread, from Biblical symbolism. The next day, it was breaking news - at least in America, otherwise it has hardly been in the news - that a nun had managed to enter the most heavily guarded complex in the United States with one pair of concrete shears.'

Does that happen more often?

'Yes, that happens more often at places where nuclear weapons are stored. I interviewed a Dutch woman who, starting in the 1980s, broke into the Volkel airbase, the site where nuclear weapons are stored in our country, on a weekly basis. Every week she cut her way in; the holes were not yet closed, or hup, there she went again. This, of course, is not publicised by the authorities.'

Brave

'Initially, Megan Rice was facing 35 years in prison for sabotage. Because she had not sabotaged anything, that charge was eventually dropped. But because she obviously shouldn't have entered it, she still got 3 years in prison. When I read the article a few years back, she was still in prison.'

What touched you most in her story?

'I thought it was so beautiful and brave and also naive. I come from a Catholic family myself and my great-aunt Trientje, who has been dead for ten years and whom I loved very much, was a nun. I decided to give her the same vocation as Megan, but in the Netherlands. Her niece Regina sought out Sister Kathleen, as Megan is called in my book, in America on behalf of her aunt. This is how it happened. In 2015 Megan was released and in January 2016 I went to Washington on the bonnefooi.'

What did you find there? 

'Megan lived in an ordinary house, with four other sisters. I introduced myself; fine, come in, we're just about to eat so we'll put in a plate. They welcomed me with open arms, fantastic. The average age was about 75, but they all worked full-time in all kinds of poverty projects and were so busy, they didn't even have time to pray. I asked at one point if they shouldn't pray before dinner. So one leaned against the kitchen counter: "Dear Lord, how nice that Anne-Gine is here, and what a beautiful day it was today, the sun was shining..." - chatter the chatter. And hup, snuggled up on the sofa with a plate, Downtown Abbey look.'

Megan Rice was not surprised that you came all the way from the Netherlands for her?

'No. The next day, I told her I wanted to use her story in my novel. All good. All she said was, "How nice that I finally have a helper in the Netherlands to get nuclear weapons out of the world."'

So you did get a task to do.

'Ha ha, I immediately thought: I'm a writer - involved, but not an activist. Activism can take nasty forms, but she was not at all coercive and I got her total confidence: there's the spare room, here you have the house key. SO warm. I found her really enlightened. She had an old body, but her eyes gave light. I was deeply touched by her personality.'

Seeds

'I asked her, for example, if she didn't mind that the action had had little impact. No, I shouldn't see it that way, she said; it's about the seeds you plant. After all, I had come now, hadn't I? And then because of my book, people in the Netherlands would start thinking. Megan embodied the fact that you can do something to make a difference, no matter how old you are. Very inspiring.'

The novel is also about the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster and the nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. What did you discover there?

'About Fukushima, people are more or less acting as if nothing happened - there were no deaths, so it's not all that bad. Meanwhile, an area the size of Belgium still has hugely high radiation levels. I was there in 2017 at the time when people were returning to their homes for the first time, after six years. I spoke to people who just started a vegetable garden again at their farms despite the high radiation.'

I read that thyroid cancer is common.

'Yes, but in the statistics that is massaged away. And there were deaths, but that too is kept out of the statistics. The impact of such a disaster is huge, even in the long term. Japan is big and there you can evacuate an area the size of Belgium. But if such a disaster happens in Belgium with the nuclear power plant in Borssele or Tihange and the wind is wrong, where should we go here?'

Eyeballs

'In the Marshall Islands, where the Americans conducted nuclear tests for 12 years, the people there got a lot of radiation on them all that time - such Polynesian people, in a wicker skirt, who cares. People got deathly ill, got burnt. Women gave birth to so-called jellyfish babies: babies with no bones, looking like a jellyfish and no eyes or cartilage. Still children are born without eyeballs. Eventually the inhabitants of Bikini and a few other islands were moved - far too late - to Majuro Island, and there they have been since the 1980s. They can't go back, because the radiation is still too high. Nobody is looking after those people.'

And then write a happy novel about it.

'Exactly. I've heard so much I didn't know, so I think this story should be told so that there might be others who care. But no one wants to read a lead-heavy book, from that people just rebel, they turn their heads away. I don't like that myself. Trientje is a hilarious character, tossing psalms around like peppercorns. And so there are several characters who bring levity.'

'Last week, someone had already read my manuscript and said, "It deals with a serious subject, but I also laughed a lot. Moreover, it made me think, because I didn't know all this." Exactly what I was hoping for.'