Canada’s uranium helped end the second world war and armed the next, the Cold War. An exploration frenzy swept the western world and mining magnate Gilbert LaBine’s new discovery at Gunnar Mines attracted attention across North America and beyond. Gunnar’s 800 residents -immigrants fleeing post-war Europe, job-seeking southerners, and the area’s First Nations and Métis - found adventure, romance, tragedy, and a freedom never again to be equalled. Meanwhile, lamps made of uranium drill core sat in their homes and their children played at the tailings pond.
It was an exuberant and innocent time. Part memoir, part oral history, Sun Dogs and Yellowcake is a thoughtful and often humorous account of a recent but largely-forgotten era.

Patricia Sandberg's profile page

• Short-listed, Whistler Independent Book Awards - Non-Fiction
• Short-listed, Canadian Authors - Fred Kerner Award
• Winner, International Book Awards - History: General
• Runner-up, IPPY (international Publisher Award: CANADA-WEST – Best Regional Non-Fiction

PATRICIA SANDBERG is a former securities lawyer who worked for mining companies with operations around the world. She lived at Gunnar and interviewed over a hundred former residents to write this book.

BC BookLooks" Ormsby Review:

"A story that "you’ve likely never heard of it, but maybe you should have.... Not many books get written about the Cold War era of instant towns in isolated places…. it is a scarce research pool into which one dives in search of on-the-ground remembrances, analysis, history, or celebration. Herein lies a major value of this book: it provides a singular document telling, largely in the voices of those who were there, of a place and time unlikely to be retold, repeated anywhere else, or revived once forgotten.... Patricia Sandberg deserves a great [deal] of credit for resurrecting Gunnar Mines with a very readable, thorough and–best of all–memorable book."

Patrick Taylor, New York Times and Globe and Mail best-selling author of the Irish Country Doctor series:

"A moving personal memoir through which is skillfully woven ... the history of the rise and fall of the uranium mining town of Gunnar, Saskatchewan.... Leavened with humour, it offers an important historical glimpse into a northern way of life which is becoming a faded memory.... A most valuable work."