Some of the main characters in Kalani Pickhart's I Will Die in a Foreign Land grew up in Chernobyl in the north of Ukraine, an area that had been home to tens of thousands of families for generations, until the explosion in reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26th, 1986 sparked the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. Toxic fires raged for 10 days, generating levels of radiation thought to be 500 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In the hours following the accident, the inhabitants of 81 settlements throughout the surrounding area (totaling more than 115,000 people) were given orders to evacuate. Initial reports suggested this would be a temporary measure lasting no more than three days. As the true extent of the fallout came to light, however, a 1000-square-mile area around the Power Plant was declared an "exclusion zone," meaning it is considered too dangerous to inhabit.

In the weeks that followed, around 1,200 people —...