Martha Hennessy has drawn closer to the Church in her later years, and to the work of her grandmother, Dorothy Day. In an era of unrest she returned to activism – and to the ideals of the Catholic Worker movement – risking decades in prison

You could call it a miracle. Desert turns to glass; air turns to fire; soil into dust. Wind carries the dust north, away from the desert, to green pastures and the cities of man. The wind keeps some of the dust, sweeping it out to the great blue ocean. Some dust is left to the cities, settling on pavement and rooftop and parkland; some finds a way to the warm bodies of the creatures who set it in motion. It sits there, the dust that was once a desert. After a little while, it begins to kill.
The year is 1955: yet another summer of open-air nuclear tests, Operation Teapot, has concluded successfully, according to the United States government, assuring the public that the thermonuclear bombs set off in Nevada present no threat to human life or health. The government is wrong.

In June of that year, Dorothy Day is arrested along with 10 other Catholic pacifists protesting a different kind of test. Operation Alert expects the desert’s arrival in the city: the atom bombing of US population centres. Day, by this point a 25-year veteran of social activism, calls Operation Alert’s compulsory air raid drills “a preparation of the collective mind for war”. For refusing to participate in the drill, Day is tried, found guilty, and given a suspended sentence. A year later, there’s fresh dust on new winds, and she will do it all again.