“It’s downwind and downstream from what we called ‘the bomb plant’ growing up,” Burger says. “It was a big top-secret place everybody buzzed about.”

Now Allendale of the ’50s and ’60s is the setting of Burger’s novel “Swallow Savannah,” about political corruption, segregation and man’s inhumanity to man, all posed against the backdrop of the Cold War and the civil rights movement.

The plant had more than 30,000 workers at its peak, which made it a microcosm for the South. Blacks and whites lived in what Burger calls “parallel universes.”

“We all work together, but at the end of the day we go home to different neighborhoods and go to different churches,” Burger says. “We’re still dealing with that.”

The title “Swallow Savannah” is taken from the name of the Swallow Savannah Methodist Church in Allendale and the cover shot is a picture of the gate to the cemetery. As Burger explains, “swallow” in this case comes from word for a low place in a swamp, “a swale or swallow.”

One of Burger’s friends describes the novel as “Huckleberry Finn meets Dr. Strangelove.”

The novel has sold very well in Charleston since it came out four months ago, in part because best-selling writer Pat Conroy calls it, “A humdinger of a novel. It’s got politics, treachery, rotten politicians and a swift-moving plot.”

But it’s also because Burger is an experienced journalist with a sense of humor, even about himself. He described himself in the press release: “Burger graduated dead last in his class at the University of Georgia, has been married five times, is a gratefully recovering alcoholic, a cancer survivor and a happy man.”

He said that people often ask him after reading the book, “Did this really happen?” Burger’s answer: “It coulda.”